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REMARKS 

ON THE PROCEEDINGS 



CANADA 



PRESENT SESSION OF PARLIAMENT 



ONE OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 



lOth APRIL, 1837. 



LONDON : 
JAMES RIDGWAY AND SONS, PICCABILLY. 

MDCCCXXXVII. 



r fozz 



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V 



REMARKS, 



1. The King's speech,* at the opening of the Session, 
called the attention of Parliament to the state of Lower 
Canada. The resolutions which, on the 6th of March, 
were brought before the House of Commons by Lord 
John Russell, f were sufficient for the occasion, and if an 
Act of Parliament were framed upon them there would 
be a ground- work on which all that is necessary for the 
government and welfare of the North American provinces 
might, gradually, be established. A suspension of those 
resolutions, or any faltering in them, is calculated to 
produce a great deal of embarrassment, the character and 
extent of which cannot readily be understood by those 
who have not been across the Atlantic ; or who have 
not been obliged to give a long attention to the affairs of 
Canada. 

2. On the 6th of March the debate on the resolutions 
was adjourned till the 8th, though not without its having 
been ascertained that there would be a very large majo- 
rity to support them ; and it was perceived, by some of 
those who take the part of the French Canadian Assem- 
bly, that so much of the resolutions as would pledge the 

* Seethe Morning Newspapers of 1st. Feb. 1837. 
t Morning Chronicle, 6th March, 1837. 

A 2 



King and his Ministers to some alteration of the legisla- 
tive and executive Councils might be voted without 
detriment to their cause, if the passing of the eighth 
resolution, which provides for the payment of what is 
due to the public officers of the province, could be delayed 
until, by communications with Canada, the various 
passions and plans of the factions there might be brought 
to bear on the minds of the people at home, and on the 
proceedings of the Imperial Parliament. Colonel 
Thompson disclosed that he would purchase delay at a 
guinea a minute, if he knew whence the supplies might 
be obtained for his Fabian scheme of operations. Lord 
John Russell was, from illness, unable to attend the 
House of Commons on the evening of the 8th, and 
several of the other Ministers having gone away after 
the first divisions, there was at last only one member of 
the cabinet in the House. More than two hours had 
been occupied with repeated divisions, and, finally, upon 
a claim of Mr. Roebuck and Mr. Hume to have the 
evidence produced which was taken in 1834, by a close 
Committee of the Commons, the debate was adjourned 
for a week, when the first four, only, of the resolutions 
had been voted. The minority, if the relative strength 
of the parties is considered, had certainly the best of this 
affair, and took up an advantageous position. The sense 
of the House had been fully expressed : a large majority 
was in favour of the resolutions ; the Ministers had the 
power of settling on that night the whole basis of the 
measures, as to Canada, which would have been required 
in this Session, and they were at last prevailed upon to 
halt before an unsubstantial obstacle. The evidence taken 



before the Committee of 1834 had not been kept secret^ 
It had even been published by the newspapers of Lower 
Canada, and, unless I am much mistaken, a know- 
ledge of it is calculated only to increase the majority in 
favour of Lord John Russell's resolutions. But delay 
was to be, and was obtained, and from that moment it 
was plain that Ministers could not entirely recover the 
lost opportunity. No evening was found before the 
Easter holidays, on which the remaining resolutions 
could be debated. On one occasion they are adjourned 
to a night on which Mr. Roebuck has a fair reason for 
objecting to their being brought forward, inasmuch as he 
has given notice of another motion. On another night 
it is discovered that Mr. Robinson, the antagonist of 
Mr. Roebuck in Canadian affairs, would be placed in 
similar circumstances.* Lord John Russell gives notice 
of a motion that his resolutions shall have precedence 
of other business on the first Wednesday after 
Easter ; and Mr. Charles Buller threatens that, by 
fictitious motions, which will have the effect of inter- 
rupting the business of the House, he will compel Lord 
John Russell to abandon his notice. t At this juncture, 
Lord Brougham informs the House of Lords that he has 
in reserve a petition from the House of Assembly of 
Lower Canada, but that his Lordship means to hold it 
over, until the renewal of the debate in the Commons : 
and that he hopes to hear no more of the eighth resolution, 
or that it will be so resisted in the Commons as never 
to be brought before the House of Lords. Mr. Charles 
Buller no longer wishes to decline the contest on the first 

■^MorningCbronicle, 2 1st March, 1837. f Ibid. 22n(l March, 1837. 



6 

Wednesday after Easter, and that day is accordingly 
fixed for the next debate : but before the holidays are 
over it becomes doubtful whether there will not, again, 
be some postponement, and on the 6th of April the post- 
ponement is made to the 15th. In the mean time, however, 
Sir William Molesworth goes to Leeds, and in a speech 
to the electors, represents the measures of the Ministers 
as a fit object for the resistance of the whole people of 
England if they are persisted in, but does not renounce 
the hope that they may be abandoned. 

3. Of the four resolutions already voted, the three first 
are mere recitals of indisputable matters of fact apparent 
in the papers laid before the House. The fourth reso- 
lution declares that it is not, at present, expedient to 
make the Upper Chamber of the Canadian Legislature 
an elected body, instead of its being appointed by 
the Crown ; but that it is expedient to make such 
alterations as will obtain for it a larger share of 
public confidence. Here for the present the progress 
of the Ministers has been arrested : and when it is re- 
collected that the British House of Lords, if no one else, 
was sure to have prevented, for the present, the fatal 
change of making the provincial legislative Council an 
elected body ; that the words of the latter part of the 
fourth resolution are such as might be construed, by 
some other ministry, into a sanction for creating, by ap- 
pointments in the name of the Crown, as decided a 
French Canadian majority in the Upper, as already 
exists in the Lower branch of the provincial Legisla- 
ture ; that this is nearly all that would be required 
to drive the British people in Canada to despair, and 



7 

that the debate of the 8th of March elicited from, 
at least, one member of the Government, an avowal 
of his inclination to make the Legislative Council 
an elected body,* it will be perceived that the advocates 
of the French Canadian Assembly have even gained 
ground by the passing of the four first resolutions, 
and that, whilst the House stops there, the British 
interests are in less favourable circumstances than they 
were at the commencement of the Session. But this is 
not all — The hereditary revenue of the Crown in Canada, 
if its lawful prerogatives are not entangled or frittered 
away, might be sufficient, if not for the immediate pay- 
ment of arrears, yet for the maintenance of a civil 
government of the Province : and upon this ground the 
Ministers might have stood, if no measures at all as 
to Canada had been proposed in the House of Commons ; 
but, now that the eighth resolution has been brought 
forward, if it is not carried, the sense of the House of 
Commons of the United Kingdom will appear to be 
arrayed against the power of the Crown within the 
province. 

4. I have confident hopes that, in spite of all opposition 
and delay, the interests of the North American provinces 
will ultimately be settled in a satisfactory manner and 
upon a sound basis. The more they are discussed, the 
more apparent will it become that, w^hilst it is desirable 
that they should enjoy the utmost liberty and the most 

* Morning Chronicle of the 9th March. By a mistake, no doubt, of the 
reporters, Mr. Laboiichere is made to say, also, that two of the Commis- 
sioners, of whom Sir Charles Gre3^ is one, are evidently in favour of an 
elected Council. The writer of these pages is able to state with confi- 
dence that this is not the case. 



8 

American institutions which are compatible with the 
broad outline and principles of the British constitution, 
and especially with its peculiar form of monarchy, it is 
their own substantial interest, and that of the whole 
British Empire, that for an indefinite period they should 
continue to be dominions of the Crown of the United 
Kingdom. But manifold inconvenience and an expand- 
ing series of evil may arise from the suspension of Lord 
John Russell's resolutions, to which I am anxious to 
direct attention, not from a desire of imputing wrong 
motives, or of casting blame on any one, and least of all 
on the Ministers, but that the actual posture of affairs 
may be discerned, and that the course of Parliament 
may be determined accordingly. There are three parties 
in Lower Canada who will be variously, but immediately, 
affected by the appearance of irresolution. The least 
violent of the French Canadian politicians, and those 
who are the most tractable to the management of their 
priesthood, will represent that it is unnecessary for the 
British Parliament to go further than the fourth resolu- 
tion. Construing it, as they may perhaps understand it, 
to mean that the concession of their demand, to have 
their Upper House elected, is merely deferred, and that, 
in the mean time, the substance of their desires may be 
accomplished by the creation of a batch of French Cana- 
dian Counsellors, they will affirm that the full perform- 
ance of this promise is alone necessary to restore sub- 
ordination and loyalty, and to obtain a vote of the money 
of which the eighth resolution goes to authorise the dis- 
tribution by the governor. Even such expectations will 
be unfounded : the party, by whom they will be held 
out, are a minority in the Assembly, and would be utterly 



unable to realize them, even if the British Government 
could be drawn on to the ruinous concession of the terms 
which they would stipulate as conditions precedent ; but 
such representations will not the less serve to embarrass 
his Majesty's Ministers, and to make them walk lamely 
through the Canada question for the remainder of the 
Session. If they could not press forward the whole of 
their resolutions on the 8th of March, how will they be 
able to do so when the French Canadian party in the 
House of Commons shall present to them the semblance 
of a promise to make without compulsion the appropria- 
tions of money which are required? At the same time, 
the more violent party in Canada, and that w^hich rules 
the French Canadian Assembly, will hold out no such 
promises. From them you will hear only of tyranny 
and violated rights, and of the resistance of their oppres- 
sors by a free and spirited people. Their friends in 
England will make the most also of this form of reaction ; 
and it is not impossible that the people at Leeds and 
elsewhere may have the phantom of another American 
War held up to them. A third party, comprizing the 
whole mercantile interests of the two Canadas, and of 
whom the confidence had been regained for Ministers by 
the announcement of Lord John Russell's resolutions, 
will become suspicious of insincerity, and will be dis- 
gusted ; and before the end of the Session, their expres- 
sions of dissatisfaction, or their attempts to give an im- 
pulse to the progress of their affairs, may excuse the 
abandonment of resolutions of which the maintenance 
will have become impracticable, and the name a jest. 
If Ministers do not urge at once their way through the 



10 

difficulties which are gathering round this point of their 
plans : if they do not assert by some decided enactment 
the authority of the Imperial Legislature, the Govern- 
ment of the Province of Lower Canada will remain for 
another year in a state of distraction, faction will he en- 
couraged, and sedition fostered into treason ; Upper 
Canada and all the North American Provinces may he 
disturbed ; and a question of empire, and of peace or 
war, may at length be raised out of this perverse 
quarrel. The British Government will have threatened 
without performing ; will have hampered the constitu- 
tional powers of the Crown ; and having declared a 
necessity to exist for an assertion of the imperial autho- 
rity, will retire with the appearance of being unable or 
afraid to assert it. 

5, If the measure, which is recommended by the eighth 
resolution, were such as Sir W. Molesworth has de- 
scribed it to the electors at Leeds, or as Mr. Leader, 
Mr. O'Connell, and Mr. Roebuck are said to have de- 
scribed it in the debates of the 6th and 8th of March, 
there would not be the slightest chance of its being 
carried through the present House of Commons, and 
Ministers would have been guilty of a blunder rather 
than a crime in bringing it forward. But the inapplicabi- 
lity of these descriptions, as they appear in the newspapers, 
is so obvious, that a few words will make it manifest. 
First, it is said that the case of Ireland is the same as that 
of Lower Canada, and that Ministers cannot refuse the 
claims of the Canadian House of Assembly without aban- 
doning the principles on which they support the claims for 
a reform of the municipal corporations in Ireland. But 



11 

Ireland differs from Lower Canada in this material respect : 
that it is an integral part of the United Kingdom : Lower 
Canada is a province : and Ministers, whatever may be 
thought of the policy or justice of their views, will not, 
by any man of clear understanding, be deemed guilty 
of an inconsistency in thinking that one part of the 
United Kingdom is entitled to have the same sort of 
corporations as another; whilst they think, also, that a 
province cannot, whilst it remains a province, have either 
an equally independent and supreme legislature as that of 
the United Kingdom, nor "a sovereignty in money affairs," 
as one speaker expressesit,norany sovereignty whatsoever. 
To make the case of Ireland more nearly parallel to that 
of Lower Canada, Mr. 0*Connell ought to suppose the 
case of the Municipal Corporation Bill having passed, 
and that the Councils of the Corporations then take 
upon themselves to protest against various enactments of 
the Imperial Parliament, and to announce their deter- 
minations that, each, until it is soothed by the repeal of 
what offends it, will obstruct the ordinary government 
of the municipality, for the regulation of which it was 
called into existence. Secondly, it is affirmed that 
what is proposed to be done by the eighth reso- 
lution, is that which caused the revolt of the co- 
lonies which now form the United States. But 
the resistance of the United States was on the sub- 
stantial ground, that they were about to be taxed with- 
out their consent and without representation : and 
their demands, at first, were limited to an exemption 
from such taxation. In the affairs of Lower Canada, 
there is no question as to the raising of any new 



12 

tax : the monies, to which the eighth resolution has 
reference, are already in the King's treasury: the source 
from which they have come is a permanent revenue, which 
is levied and recovered under an Act of the Im- 
perial Parliament:* and whilst the public officers of 
the Province are unpaid, and many of them are reduced 
to distress, the money is lying useless and without profit, 
in the vaults of the Government House; and if there 
be not an interposition of the Imperial Parliament, may 
lie there for any length of time. It is not the province, or 
its legislature, which is opposed to the distribution of this 
money, but the majority of th- House of Assembly alone; 
and this body does not stand as the New England colonies 
did, upon a claim that new taxes shall not be levied upon 
them without their assent, but has declared its determi- 
nation, and for four years has persisted in that determina- 
tion, to extort a concession of demands which involve the 
abandonment of the province to a party, and the de- 
struction of the legal rights of many of its inhabitants : so 
that the Imperial Parliament could not yield to these 
urgent instances, without submitting to act in opposition 
to its own sense of justice, at the bidding of the provin- 
cial House of Assembly, Lastly, an attempt is made to 
represent the conduct of the Assembly as a mere example 
of the well-known, but rare incident in English history, 
of a refusal of supplies by the House of Commons, until 
a grievance is redressed by the Crown. But, not to repeat 
what has been already stated, that there is no question as 
to the grant of a supply, but only as to the application of 
monies already in the Treasury, which have issued from 

* 3 and 4 W. IV,, 59. XL 



13 

an established and permanent revenue, it is not with 
the Crown that the contest of the Canadian House of 
Assembly lies, nor are they grievances that the Crown is 
capable of redressing of which the Assembly complains ; 
so that in the attempt to assimilate the question to one 
between the House of Commons and the Crown, there is 
an oblivion of the fact, that in the one case the con- 
test has been between two co-ordinate branches of 
one and the same Supreme Legislature ; but in this 
case of Lower Canada, it is one branch of a subordinate 
and Provincial Legislature which insists upon dictating to 
the whole three branches of the supreme and Imperial 
Legislature its own will and pleasure. The grievance 
which is alleged is, that the Parliament of the United 
Kingdom has dared to make enactments respecting 
the province of Lower Canada ; the right which is 
claimed is, that the Provincial Legislature shall not be a 
subordinate one ; and that upon the peremptory demand 
of the House of Assembly of the province, the King, 
Lords, and Commons of the United Kingdom shall either 
themselves cancel divers of their own enactments, or de- 
clare the independent and plenary powers of the provincial 
House of Assembly to act without regard to them : in 
default of which, at the end of four years of determined 
resistance, and after repeated manifestoes of its intentions 
the Assembly has expressed its desire that it may no longer 
be imagined there is any mistake, and has proclaimed 
its immutable resolution to do that which will obstruct 
and, as far as the Assembly can eifect it, will render 
impracticable the government of the province, by an ever- 
lasting refusal to pass the ordinary Bill for the appro- 



u 

priation of the established revenues, to the payment of 
a civil list, of which in former years, every item has been 
repeatedly sanctioned by the votes of both Houses of the 
Canadian Legislature. Other grounds have been taken 
in earlier stages of the dispute, but this is the principal 
and true position in which the French Canadian majority 
of the Assembly has at last deliberately chosen, to make its 
stand ; and the British Parliament has no choice but to 
say whether it has ever intended to abandon its power 
over the province : if it has not, whether a case has not 
been presented in which it is right to exercise it : and 
whether, at the point at which we have arrived, there can 
be any further delay or hesitation without a debasement of 
the imperial authority. 

6. But, although the most deliberate reflection has 
satisfied me, that the grounds on which the Provincial 
House of Assembly has rested its refusal of the ordinary 
appropriations, and the declared desire of the Upper 
Chamber of the Provincial Legislature to have them 
made, are sufficient to justify the Imperial Legislature 
in taking the matter into its own hands, I do not affirm 
that no other imaginable enactment than that which is 
recommended by the eighth resolution would suit the 
occasion. When, indeed, the House of Assembly first 
announced its intention of withholding the appropri- 
ations, the most cautious and the most constitutional 
course would have been to have endeavoured to reduce 
the civil list of Lower Canada to an establishment which 
might be supported out of the hereditary revenue of the 
Crown in the province; and, in that case, if the here- 
ditary revenue had been insufficient, application might 



15 
have been made to Parliament to assist it, in various 
ways. Nor is there any reason to suppose that, even 
now, his Majesty's Ministers, if Parliament should give 
it a preference, would refuse to introduce, under the 
sanction of a Royal message, a Bill to authorize a sale 
by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, of a portion 
of the Crown lands within the United Kingdom, and to 
enable his Majesty to apply the proceeds in the discharge 
of the arrears of the civil list in Lower Canada. No 
doubt, there are other methods also; and it is highly 
probable that the Earl of Ripon, and Lord Brougham, 
have concerted some measures which it is their Lord- 
ships' intention to propose ; for both of those noblemen 
have expressed some dissatisfaction with the course 
which has been taken by ministers ; and one of their 
Lordships was the Lord High Chancellor, and the other 
was his Majesty's principal Secretary of State for the 
Colonies, at the time when the House of Assembly first 
refused the appropriations, and for some time both before 
and afterwards. At the date of the Earl of Ripon's 
despatch of the 9th of April, 1832, if a reduction had 
been made in the civil establishment of Lower Canada, 
and an Act of Parliament had been obtained, declaratory 
of the right of the Courts of Justice of the Province to 
establish, with the sanction of the Privy Council at 
home, such fees as might be necessary for the ordinary 
functions of the Courts, and authorizing also the Justices 
of the Peace, in session, in the counties, or the 
Vestries of the parishes, to make and levy local as- 
sessments for the arrest and prosecution of felons, 
and for the general conservation of the peace, much of 



16 

the present difficulties might have been prevented. As 
nothing of this sort was done, and as both of the statesmen, 
whom I have named, must have foreseen the possibility 
of the Canadian Assembly's adhering to its resolutions, 
it is but fair to infer that both, even at that time, had 
agreed upon some other plan which would be an ade- 
quate resource in case of the Assembly pursuing the 
line of conduct in which, unhappily, it has persisted, and 
is likely to persist. It cannot now be long before the Noble 
Lords will impart their joint advice : and an imperfect 
anticipation of it would be an injustice. Of two things 
we may rest assured: first, that they who, in 1832, 1833 
and 1834, thought it was unnecessary to advise His 
Majesty that the Civil List of Lower Canada should be 
reduced, will not think it just to the public officers, 
whose services were continued through that period, that 
they should remain unpaid ; or that it is consistent with 
the dignity or honour of the Crown, that His Majesty 
should be left any longer without the means of paying 
them. Secondly, that neither Lord Ripon nor Lord 
Brougham will recommend to the House of Peers of the 
United Kingdom, that those means should be obtained 
for His Majesty, by a submission to the demands of the 
Canadian House of Assembly. Those who have been in 
the Province know that it would be useless to yield any 
without all : and both Houses of the British Parliament 
know that the six principal ones are 5 First, that an Act 
of Parliament should be passed, " to introduce the prin- 
*' ciple of popular election into the constitution of the 
** Legislative Council ;" Secondly, "the pure and simple 
'' repeal by the Parliament of the United Kingdom of 



17 

'* the Act called the Tenures Act;" Thirdly, " the repeal 
" of the Act constituting the Land Company;" Fourthly, 
'* that the Executive Council should be made directly re- 
" sponsible to the House of Assembly ;" Fifthly, " that the 
*' King's hereditary revenue should be placed under the 
" control of the Assembly before the establishment of any 
" Civil List;" Sixthly, **that the whole of the desert tracts 
'^ comprised within the lines which have been given as the 
" boundaries of the Province should, by an Act of the 
" Imperial Parliament, be placed under the exclusive 
" control of the Provincial Legislature." 

7. I annex to these remarks three documents ; and 
the only comment I shall make upon them is to mark 
the passages, which appear to me to justify the account 
I have given of the Assembly's ultimatum. If I should 
unwittingly have misrepresented it, for which I should 
be very sorry, I shall thus have supplied the means for 
an immediate correction of the error. 



I. 



An Address presented by the House of Assembly of Lower 
ciZltothe Governor-in-Chief, on the 'Srd of October, 



1836. 



To his Excellency the Rigl^t Honourable Archibald Earl of Gosford 
Baron Worlingham of Beccles, in the County of Suftolk, Captain 
Genera7and Lvernor-in-Chief in and over the Provinces of lx>wer 
Canada and Upper Canada, Vice-Admiral of the same, and one of 
His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, &c. &c. &c. 

Mav it please vour Excellency, . , ,-, „f 

We, &is Majesty's faithful and loyal subjects the Comrnons of 
Lower Canada, in Provincial Parliament assembled, respectfully ap- 
proach your Excellency for the purpose of further reply^nyio certain 
^arts of the speech which it pleased your Excellency to ^^1 ^er at tV,e 
opening of the present session ; also to a despatch from His ^aje ys 
Lncfpal Secretary of State for the Colonies dated t^owrnng-t^ee^ 
7th June, 1836, which, with various documents, you were pleased to 
cause to be laid, according to promise, before us. 

Referring to our Address to His Majesty on the state of the prov^nce 
dated 2f^th Fetruary, 1836, we assure your Exc^^^^ncy as we^ 
already done on a recent occasion, that it contamed the faithful expies- 
sion of the views, opinions, and wants of this House, as wel as of he 
people whom it represents. We have not as yet been able to dz cover 
any misconceptions or any misunderstanding on our parted a mature to 
change the fiews which we then entertained on the divers subjeas 
treated therein, or suggest other means for their accomplishment. We 
MHeve it to be our duty, as well as for the advantage of the people, 
to persist in the same demands, in the same declarations, and partly 
cularly in the demand of an Elective Legislative Council Our 
opinion on the position of the country at the F^se^^^ ^P^f/l' ^^ ^^^- 
Xssed in our answer to your Excellency , dated the 24th of this month, 
Avill show how ill justified we should have been in departing therefrom. 
We trust that His Majesty's Government will not, after mature dehbe- 
ration, entertain any doubt as to the correctness of our statements and 
assertions, particularly of the necessity of changing, conformably to the 
prayers of Ihis House and of the people, a branch of the legislature 
which has, with narrow and self-interested views, and moved by party 
spirit, interposed itself, of late more than ever, between the country and 
metropolitan state, and destroyed all our attempts to aid in the repara- 
tion of abuses, and by causing the result of our labours to reach the 
foot of the throne, to enable His Majesty's Government to contirm us 



20 

in the belief of the sincerity of its intentions and promises. We re- 
spectfully submit, that although the evils and grievances which oppress 
the country have not been caused by us, we have spared no pains to 
terminate the same : those efforts have all failed in that branch, and we 
are firmly convinced that all measures of a just and liberal nature will 
hereafter constantly fail therein. The remedy is within the reach of 
His Majesty's Government. We shall see it applied with the most 
lively satisfaction ; and however sincere may be His Majesty's desire to 
witness the entire removal of the grievances of the country, we can 
furnish in proof of a desire equally sincere on our part, the manner in 
which we promised, in our Address above mentioned^ to welcome the 
reforms which we still expect, and the spirit of liberality and concession 
which accompanied that expression of our hopes. 

There is, in the more recent dispositions of the Government in re- 
ference to the full and unrestrained exercise of the rights of this Legis- 
lature, a point which bears essentially on the character of the present 
Legislative Council, which we pray His Majesty not to lose sight of; 
that is, that although in principle His Majesty's intention of leaving to 
the Provincial Legislature the repeal of certain injurious laws, and the 
adoption of new provisions favourable to the institutions and to the 
liberties of this province, in whatever concerns its particular interests, 
be constitutional in its nature, and a wise acknowledgment even of the 
principle of our position, the effect thereof has been and will be prac- 
tically impossible in consequence of the anomaly which the existence 
of the said Legislative Council has created in the Legislature of this 
province. And we express our constant and unalterable conviction, 
guided by the principles of the constitution itself and a long and sor- 
rowful experience, that this state of violent opposition cannot be 
changed imtil the principle of popular election shall be introduced into 
the constitution of the said Council^ so as to have a second distinct 
branch, agreeably to what the existing state of society and the delibe- 
rate voice of public opinion require, and which shall enjoy at once a 
due share of public confidence and a full exercise of an enlightened and 
independent judgment ; a result so much to be desired, that, in the 
said despatch, the Ministers of the Crown have found therein one of the 
essential principles of the Act of 1791. We therefore dare to flatter 
ourselves that the pretensions and errors of the past will be forgotten, 
and that this great question will be considered in its full extent, in its 
connexion as well with the principles as with the practice of the consti- 
tution, and not as regards peculiar reluctances or preconceived opinions, 
respecting which it has pleased His Majesty, in the said despatch, to 
remove our fears concerning the future. 

What we have stated above relative to the operation in the province 
itself of a Legislature free to watch over its interests, induces us to hope 
that until there be an essential change in the Legislative Council, His 
Majesty, whilst desirous of adhering to his benevolent inclination of ab- 
staining from every act which could be represented as an unnecessary 
intervention in the internal affairs of the province, and thereby even 
oppose himself to every legislative act on the part of the metropolitan 



21 

state tending to destroy that large basis, would be pleased to take into 
his consideration the pure and simple repeal by the Parliament of the 
United Kingdom of the Act commonly called the Tenures' Act, and of 
that passed in favour of the Land Company, as not being opposed 
thereto, inasmuch as the Canadian Legislature never par'icipated in the 
passing of these two Acts, against which this House and the people 
have, from the commencement, universally protested, and as their oppo- 
sition to the rights, laius, and institutions of this province, is now 
scarcely a subject of controversy . We therefore persist in praying 
that until the Bill passed on several occasions by this House for the 
abrogation of the said Tenures' Act be favourably received in a Legis- 
lative Council disposed to give effect to the Royal intentions, His 
Majesty's Government would be pleased to assist in otherwise accom- 
plishing the repeal demanded, which would enable us to re-establish 
order in the important question of lands and of proprietary law, and to 
accomplish, for the advantage and happiness of the inhabitants of the 
country, and of the other of His Majesty's subjects, the views expressed 
in our said Address. 

It is for the same reasons that we persist in demanding likewise the 
repeal of the Act passed in favour of the Land Company, and of the 
privileges which that Act pretended to confirm. The considerations of 
public and private law which cause us to take a view of this subject 
different from that taken by His Majesty's Ministers in the said 
despatch, are too numerous and too palpable to be detailed at this 
moment. We shall pass over, also, in silence, the rights peculiar to 
the people of this province, and the circumstances, painful to us, under 
which that Act was passed and those privileges granted ; and we shall 
abstain from pointing out the means at the disposal of the Government 
to settle this question with justice to all parties. We shall merely add, 
that every day convinces us the more that the principal tendency of that 
Company is to maintain that division of people against people, amongst 
the different classes of His Majesty's subjects, which has, in common 
with all the evils resulting therefrom, been fostered in times past, with 
too much success, by corrupt administrations. 

Neither can we forbear from here pointing out what we conceive to 
be, independent of its constant connexion with the system of metropo- 
litan ascendancy and colonial degradation, a grand error in the disposal 
of the public domain of this province. That is, that in granting the 
lands nominally under the tenure of free and common soccage, which, 
based upon views of free and prosperous colonization, and with a due 
respect for the laws of the country, would, in fact, be a desirable tenure, 
the advantages thereof have, in reality, only been accorded to the ori- 
ginal grantees, rendered absolute masters of immense extent of land, 
without any reserve having been made for the future rights and interests 
of the mass of actual settlers who would improve the soil, who, although 
His Majesty's free-born subjects, find themselves fettered in the extent 
of all those great concessions, by onerous and even servile tenures. It 
is, nevertheless, after this system has been tardily repudiated, that 
nearly a million of acres of the lands of the country have been impro- 
vidently, and without any greater control, granted to the said Cora- 

c 



22 

pany, with the further privilege of augmenting that quantity by 
unh'mited acquisitions dangerous to the liberties of the people. Inde- 
pendent of this anomaly, and numerous other vices with which the said 
grant is tainted, the King's Ministers cannot be so unacquainted with 
the subject as to consider it a question merely of private law, or to 
believe that in any new country the disposal and settlement of an im- 
mense extent of the public lands can be withdrawn from the control of 
the Legislature, and abandoned to the unrestrained direction of 
individuals. 

The presence in the province of certain pretended authorities, whose 
powers and attributes are not to be found either in the constitution or 
in any law, has so often been alleged by your Excellency and by the 
executive authorities in the metropolitan state as being of a nature to 
retard till a future period the restoration of order and the introduction 
of those improvements demanded by the people, that we cannot refrain 
from here making a few general observations which must have attracted 
the attention of every public man. We believe that this House is the 
legitimate and authorized organ of all classes of inhabitants in the 
country, and that its representations are the constitutional expressions 
of their wishes and of their wants. We believe that the impartial use 
we have made of the powers vested in us, for the protection and the 
happiness of all our fellow-subjects, ought to have secured to us due 
confidence, when we solemnly exercised those high privileges. It 
must, however, have been the result of an unjust distrust of this House 
and the people of this province, that His Majesty's Government has 
rejected our prayers to defer to the opinions of a few individuals, 
strangers to the country, the fate of which was thereby committed to 
men whose vague and subordinate mission could not be acknowledged 
by any independent authority recognised by the constitution, the spirit 
of which His Majesty is particularly desirous to maintain. Thus it is 
that a power acting without law and against law, could not form any 
other connexion but with those who entertained the same erroneous 
views, and who, long since the avowed enemies of this House and of 
the people, profit by the system of dishonest policy which has been, up 
to this moment, the bane of the country, and which has, nevertheless, 
been maintained by many acts and declarations of the Crown and of 
Parliament. We believe, therefore, that the restoration of order and of 
the mutual respect which those whose duty it is to maintain it owe to 
each other, is one of the measures the most conducive to promote the 
establishment of a government as responsible and as popular as that 
which His Majesty, in enumerating in the saiJ despatch his disposi- 
tions on several important points, declares he is entirely disposed to 
admit. We must equally declare that any departure from those inten- 
tions, based upon inquiries emanating from a vitiated source, could not 
be sanctioned by any portion of the people sufficiently strong to lend 
its aid to a good government. 

We shall pass over in silence the judicial independence and the esta- 
blishment in the province of a high tribunal of public impeachments. 
It is too evident that the sole obstacle which now exists depends upon 
the solution of the question which we look upon as of the utmost 
importance. 



23 

Neither shall we discuss the demand made by this House of the free 
exercise of its parliamentary and constitutional authority over the set- 
tlement and management of the lands of the province, and its control 
over all the branches of the Executive Government ; we shall also omit 
whatever appertains to the settlement of the financial question, whereby 
the executive authority would no longer impede the rightful control of 
this House over the public revenue. Our views and offers on these 
two subjects have, without doubt, been considered liberal by His 
Majesty's Government ; we are at least inclined so to believe, in conse- 
quence of the opinion expressed in the said despatch on this part of our 
Address ; moreover, if we understand, in its true meaning, that part of 
the said despatch which approves of our opinions on divers other 
points, without discussing any of them in particular, we should be in- 
duced to believe that His Majesty's Government, convinced of the 
justice of our demands on these points, and of their accordance with 
the goorl government of the country, has now acceded thereto without 
requiring any farther useless delay, and without further investigation 
of rights and principles so clear and so essential. 

If our hope of happy days for our country do not lead us to interpret 
too liberally general expressions, and if that hope be founded on some- 
thing more than generous inferences, we cannot sufficiently express to 
your Excellency how much we rejoice at having, by our perseverance, 
contributed to the substitution of an unjust and partial system, by an 
order of things conformable to the rights and demands of the people. 
Nevertheless, we cannot but feel deep regret and profound grief, when 
we consider that these declarations, as well as those which preceded 
them on several occasions, have as yet availed nothing; that the vices 
of our political institutions remain unaltered ; that the Provincial 
Legislature continues to be paralyzed in its functions, by the support 
given to the Legislative Council ; that no essential reform has been in- 
troduced as yet into the Administration, or for the removal of abuses ; 
that the executive and judicial authorities have preserved and mani- 
fested the same character of a faction combined against the liberties of 
the country, and its public property ; when we perceive that prejudi- 
cial inquiries in opposition to the above-mentioned declaration have not 
as yet been abandoned; when, in fine, the Executive Government of 
the province, doubtless in obedience to the special order of the authority 
which appointed it, has had recourse, since the last session, to the 
practice of disposing of the public treasure of the province, without the 
consent of this House. Thus the state of the country having therefore 
remained the same, we believe it to be our imperative duty to adhere 
unalterably to the contents of our said Address of the 26th February 
last, as well as to our previous declarations ; and to them do we 
adhere. 

In reference now to the demand which your Excellency has renewed 
under existing circumstances for a supply, relying on the salutary 
maxim, that the correction of abuses and the redress of grievances 
ought to precede the grant thereof, we have been of opinion that there 
is nothing to authorize us to alter our resolution of the last session, 

c 2 



24 

Your Excellency "will bear in mind that our determination to obtain 
justice by means warranted by the best approved precedents, and by 
the spirit of the constitution itself, was taken at a more distant epoch, 
and that, as a mark of our confidence in you, we temporarily departed 
from that determination by voting a supply for six months. We assure 
your Excellency, as well as His Majesty's Government, that in that 
Act, which we look upon as a mark of our liberality, we were prompted 
by no minor consideration, nor by any unjust or incorrect interpreta- 
tion of the intentions of His Majesty's Ministers. The conclusion of 
our said Address contains an explanation of our motives, and of the 
difficulties which it was not in our power to ward off; the same cir- 
cumstances, as well as the previous consideration of the salutary prin- 
ciple above referred to, render it incumbent on us, in the present con- 
juncture, to adjourn our deliberations until His Majesty's Government 
shall by its acts, especially by rendering the second branch of the 
Legislature conformable to the wishes and wants of the people^ have 
commenced the great work of justice and reform, and created a confi- 
dence which alone can crown it with success. 

Amidst the closing events of the last session, there is one circum- 
stance in particular which we respectfully believe has not been suffi- 
ciently noticed by His Majesty's Government. That is : it was not 
this House, but the Legislative Council which deprived the Provincial 
Administration of the resources which would have been at its disposal, 
and which placing itself between the Crown and the people in a matter 
specially appertaining to the representatives of the latter, has pre- 
vented the free gift of the Commons to reach the Throne. 

In concluding this Address, we shall again express our belief in your 
Excellency's sincerity and intentions, and we flatter ourselves that 
under different circumstances and with more direct powers, your Ex- 
cellency would have sooner helped to obtain the change which we 
await. If such a change bad taken place, the good understanding 
which has hitherto existed between this House and your Excellency, 
notwithstanding the difficulties of our respective positions, would lead 
us to expect the most happy results from your Excellency's desire to 
advance the prosperity of the country. 



II. 

Address to His Majesty, voted by the House of Assembly 
of Lower Canada, 2Qth February, 1836. 



To the King's Most Excellent Majesty. 

May it please Your Majesty, 

We, your Majesty's faithful and loyal subjects, the Commons of 

Lower Canada in Provincial Parliament assembled, humbly approach 

Your Majesty's throne for the purpose of expressing once more, in the 

name of the people we represent, our firm though respectjul opinion of 



25 

the necessity of the reforms we have so often prayed for in the consti- 
tution of this Province, and of the redress of the grievances and abuses 
which have prevailed therein. We seize the same occasion to make 
known our sentiments with regard to a portion of the recent views and 
determinations of Your Majesty's Government, in so far as it has been 
possible for us to become acquainted with them. fVe pray Your Ma- 
jesty to believe in our sincerity. We desire, as the representatives of 
a people, who have even in times of difficulty shown a strong attach- 
ment to the empire over which Your Majesty presides, not to forget the 
sentim.ents of respect we owe to Your Majesty's sacred person, and 
which Your Royal attributes require ; but at the same time it would 
be culpable in us to sanction by our silence any misconception with 
regard to the nature of the improvement and reforms required, or to 
the constitutional and practical system of government which we desire 
to see established in this province, and which we believe to be equally 
in accordance with the true principles of the constitution, the incon- 
testible rights of the inhabitants of this Province, and their natural and 
social position, and with their wishes, interests and necessities. 

When we solemnly repeat, that the principal object of the political 
reforms, which this House and the people of this province have for 
a great number of years used every effort to obtain, and which have fre- 
quently been detailed to Your Majesty, is to extend the elective prin- 
ciple to the Legislative Council, a branch of the Provincial Legislature 
which, by its opposition to the people, and by reason of its imperfect 
and vicious constitution, has proved insufficient to perform the func- 
tions for which it was originally created; to render the Executive 
Council directly responsible to the representatives of the people, con- 
formably to the principles and practice of the British cosistitution as esta- 
blished in the United Kingdom ; — to place under the wholesome and 
constitutional control of this House the whole public revenue raised in 
this Province, from whatever source derived ; — to obtain the repeal of 
certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, in 
which the people of this Province are not represented, with regard to 
the internal affairs of this Province, making its territory and best re- 
sources the subject of unfair speculation and monopoly, and which we 
hold to be a violation of the rights of the Legislature and of the people 
of this Province ; to ensure equal rights and impartial justice to all 
classes of the inhabitants of this Province; — to abolish sinecures and 
the accumulation of incompatible offices; — to redress the numerous 
abuses which prevail in the various departments of the public service ; — 
to obtain for the Provincial Legislature, with regard to the internal 
affairs of the Province, and more especially over the management and 
settlement of the waste lands thereof, for the benefit of all classes of 
Your Majesty's subjects without distinction, that essential control 
which would be the direct consequence of the principles of the consti- 
tution. When we say we respectfully repeat to Your Majesty these 
our demands, and declare our firm intention to persevere in asking 
them, as being alone calculated to ensure the liberty, peace and welfare 
of this Province, and the confidence of the people in the Government, 
and to cement their political union with the United Empire, we can 



26 

scarcely fear that we should not he Mwders^oocf% Your Majesty. We 
shall, however, add to our humble declarations some new facts which 
must tend yet more to convince Your Majesty of the justice of what we 
ask, and of the correctness of the view we take of the common interest 
of the mother country and of this colony. 

We are bound, in the first place, to thank Your Majesty for having 
recalled the head of the Executive Government, and for having ap- 
pointed as his successor a distinguished personage, who, independently 
of his qualifications as an individual, of which we have no motive for 
doubting, was, from his previous habits and position, more likely to com- 
prehend our wishes and our wants. At the opening of the present 
session of the Provincial Parhament we had to applaud the principles of 
order and justice enounced in the speech delivered from the throne by 
his Excellency the Governor-in-chief of this Province, on divers matters 
connected with the administration of the government, and which might 
become the subject of our deliberations. In our firm hope that the 
eflTorts of Your Majesty's Government to do full justice to the people of 
this country would be continued without relaxation, in a spirit of en- 
lightened liberality, we have by our answer shown that confidence 
could still exist on our part and that of the people in Your Majesty's 
Government. We believed so much the more firmly, that the declara- 
tion of which we have just spoken, and the extraordinary attributions 
and circumstances which accompanied the usual powers of Your Ma- 
jesty's representative, were our guarantees that the essential and vital 
subjects which were only s])oken of to us as matters for the future de- 
liberation and decision of Your Majesty and Your Parliament, would be 
looked at in the same comprehensive spirit, and with the same views, 
and above all, that the researches and determination adapted to throw 
light on the solution of these weighty questions would not be restrained 
by any formal refusal of the demands which were to form the matter of 
investigation, nor by any final determination to maintain at all events 
the pretensions raised from time to time on divers subjects of colonial 
policy by Your Majesty's responsible Ministers, and which called forth 
the remonstrances of this House and the people ; matters which, as 
Your Majesty was pleased to assure us, were to be equally the subject 
of research and deliberation. We thought, that without bringing for- 
ward unjust and inapplicable theories of metropolitan domination and 
colonial abasement, without recurring to a system proved false by me- 
morable examples, regard would be had exclusively to the principles of 
the constitution, the mutual interests of all parties, and the peace, wel- 
fare, rights, wishes and wmts of these important portions of the British 
dominions. It could, therefore, only be with lively anxiety that we 
were brought to suppose, from the knowledge which reached us, at 
first indirectly, and afterwards by the oflScial channel, of certain extracts 
from a Despatch, dated the 27th of July, 1835, addressed by Your Ma- 
jesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies, to certain persons 
in Lower Canada, (unacquainted as we moreover are with the tenor of 
the other parts of the same document, and with any subsequent instruc- 
tions,) that in point of fact the researches authorized by Your Majesty, 
for the purpose of ascertaining the means of doing justice to Your 



27 

Canadian subjects, were, on several of the most essential points, limited 
by preconceived opinions and anticipated decisions in the manner here- 
inbefore set forth. We are bound on this head to declare, that in the 
face of obstacles like these, if Yoiir Majesty's Government should per- 
sist in maintaining them, and without Your Royal assent to the essen- 
tial reforms we expect, no measure of minor importance can have the 
effect desired; that the delay occasioned by the investigations an- 
nounced, will serve only to embolden the enemies of the people of this 
Province andof Your Majesty's Government in their hopes of dissension 
and violence, and that the best intentions or even acts on the part of the 
head of the Provincial Executive, even in conjunction with the efforts 
of this House and of the people, might be wrecked in contending against 
the deep rooted system of vice and abuse which has robbed Your Ma- 
jesty's Government in this Province of all efficiency and respect, and has 
endangered the liberties and safety of the inhabitants of Canada. 

At the head of the reforms which we persist in considering as essen- 
tial, is the introduction of the principle of popular election into the 
constitution of the Legislative Council. The people of the country 
without distinction regard this body, as at present constituted, as facti- 
ously opposed to its institutions, its state of society, its feelings, and its 
wants, and as having been and as being necessarily the strong hold of 
oppression aud abuses. They continue in like manner to believe that 
any partial reform luhich shall stop short of the introduction of the 
elective principle, will be altogether insufficient, and will, as leaving 
the inherent vice untouched, bring back the same evils and the same 
collisions. We think, that with regard to the constantly baneful action 
of the Legislative Council, we have amply explained ourselves to Vour 
Majesty, and that no other proof than the past and the present acts of 
that body is needed to remove all doubt as to the nature and spirit of 
the improvements to be introduced into it. We look, in this respect, 
upon the Act of 1791, giving Legislators for life to the Canadian Pro- 
vinces, at the mere pleasure of the executive authority, as an unfortunate 
experiment, followed by most unhappy consequences. We also look 
upon this experiment as entirely foreign to the British Constitution. 
We regret that in the extracts from the despatches we have mentioned, 
an attempt is made, by begging tbe question, to infer an analogy which 
does not exist, for the purpose of aggravating certain specious objec- 
tions against an Elective Council. We would respectfully pray Your 
Majesty to remark, that the influence which prevailed in the Councils 
of the Empire, at the period when the Act of 1791 was passed, was cal- 
culated to give an undue preponderance to the aristocratic principle, 
while, in America, the independent state and the progress of society re- 
pelled any doctrine of this nature, and demanded the extension of the 
contrary principle. We must also express our regret, that while Your 
Majesty's representative in this Province has solicited the co-operation 
of the two Houses of the Provincial Legislature to labour at the reform 
of abuses, aud while this House is fully disposed to grant that co-ope- 
ration, the constant opposition of the Legislative Council is of a nature 
to prevent so important an appeal from being followed by any result. 
For ourselves we are conscious that we have ever been, and are still 



^8 

guided in our labours by our conviction of what was for the greatest ad- 
vantage of the people, and best adapted to cause Your Majesty's Go- 
vernment in this Province to be respected, cherished and strengthened ; 
and^rm in our determination to pursue the same course, we pray Your 
Majesty to believe that we shall not depart from it. 

We are not ignorant that some individuals interested in the main- 
tenance of bad government, and accustomed to a system of ascendancy 
and domination, pretend that harmony might be established between 
the constituted authorities in the Province, by introducing in its 
territorial limits, or in the representation of the people, violent changes, 
of which the sole end would be to deprive a numerous portion of Your 
Majesty's subjects of a due participation in the advantages of the con- 
stitution, and to establish invidious political preferences, as a prelude 
to the subversion of the institutions of the Province, at the very time 
when Your Majesty's Government is proclaiming principles of equal 
justice to all, and acknowledges the excellence of our institutions. We 
rely too much on the honour of the Government to believe in the pos- 
sibility of attempts which would destroy all the ties that bind the peo- 
pie to Great Britain, and would force them to regret their allegiance. 
We cannot, however, but express our regret that in the extracts already 
mentioned, as well as in several other instances, it has appeared as if the 
same importance was attached to the calumnious representations of a 
small number of individuals, supporting the abuses of past adminis- 
trations, as to the solemn deliberations and unvarying opinions of the 
representatives of the people, who form a branch of the Legislature 
which no prejudice against their origin can succeed in causing to be 
regarded as less essential than the other and co-ordinate branch. In 
this systematic practice of assimilating a recognized authority, acting in 
a constitutional capacity, to the disorderly passions which seek to over- 
throw it, the people of this country might in the end see a desire to 
misunderstand the essence and unity of the popular principle acting in 
the Government, while the aristocratic principle is upheld by attaching 
it to the Legislative Council, as if it were part of the essence of the 
constitution itself. We have at least the satisfaction of seeing that the 
great body of the inhabitants of this Province, of every creed and of 
every origin, are satisfied with the share they have in the Provincial 
representation, and that our fellow-subjects of the less numerous origin 
in particular, acknowledge the spirit of justice and brotherly love with 
which we have endeavoured to ensure to all the inhabitants of the 
country, a participation in its political and natural advantages. We 
perceive in this happy union another guarantee of good government, 
and an antidote against the tortuous policy which it is sought to sup- 
port by unjust distinctions. 

Even admitting, in opposition to principles and to facts, that the 
Legislative Council of Lower Canada had some analogy to the House 
of Lords, it would not follow that the constitution of the said Council 
ought not to undergo any change, when such change shall become 
necessary to tlie stability of the Government, and to the common wel- 
fnre of the people, since the happy modifications in the institutions of 
the United Kingdom, which have assured to 7,000,000 of men their 



29 

civil and political rights, which have dispensed with intolerant tests, 
and have purified and equalized the representation of the people, al- 
though opposed at first by the powers of the day, as contrary to the 
constitution, found at length their place in the statute book, to the great 
benefit of Your Majesty's Government, and of Your subjects. What 
the inhabitants of the three Kingdoms asked and obtained for them- 
selves, under given circumstances, we ask for ourselves under circum- 
stances very little dissimilar, and we believe that when we shall have 
obtained them, the constitution will have lost nothing of its essence or 
of its efficiency, but will, on the contrary, have acquired an element of 
strength and activity, rendering it more fit to attain the objects of its 
institution, the happiness and contentment of the people. 

Respecting^ as we do, the expression of the Royal Pleasure, we yet 
regret that the Ministers of the Crown should have declared that Your 
Majesty was most unwilling to admit that the question of an Elective 
Legislative Council was a subject open to debate in this Province. We 
beg to be permitted to represent to Your Majesty ^ that it is not within 
the province of the Colonial Secretary to limit the subjects which are 
to engage the attention of this House and the people it represents, 
within the required forms, with the view of improving the laws and con- 
dition of the Province. Against this infringement of the liberties of 
the subject, by one of Your Majesty's responsible servants, we dare to 
appeal to the supreme authority of the Empire, to that of Your Majesty 
sitting in Your High Court of Parliament. 

We do not intend to discuss the historical points of English colonial 
government, on which we venture to differ with your Majesty's Mini- 
sters. Time has solved the problem, and we firmly believe that those 
happy countries to which these questions refer would never have at- 
tained the degree of prosperity which they now enjoy, either under 
the old Colonial Government or under a system like that which suc- 
cessive Colonial Ministers have established and maintained in this 
colony. 

On the subject of the Executive Council, we abstain from entering 
on any details, because we hold this question to be closely connected 
in practice with the other more important subjects of colo^nial policy. 
We shall confine ourselves to saying, that the full and entire recog- 
nition of the rights of this House and of the people, by those whom 
Your Majesty may be pleased to call to Your Councils, and their con- 
stitutional responsibility, based upon the practice of the United King- 
dom, will be essential motives for confidence in Your Majesty's 
Government. 

We have also asked, and we now again ask, for the repeal of certain 
noxious Acts, of which the people of the country have complained ; we 
wish, among others, to mention the Act of the sixth year of our late 
Sovereign George the Fourth, Your Majesty's Royal Brother, chapter 
59, commonly called the " Tenures' Act," and also the more recent Act 
granting certain privileges to a company of individuals, residing chiefly 
in London, luhose object is to make the lands of this Province a sub- 
ject of speculation. With regard to the former of these Acts, its nature 
and its effects, our complaints have been so detailed and so numerous, 



30 

that we shall abstain from repeating them ; we shall only add, that 
recent decisions of the superior tribunals of the country have refused 
any validity to the proceedings of the pretended Court of Escheats 
established by the said Act, which has in fact merely served as a pre- 
text for creating several sinecures, paid out of the public revenue of 
this Province, and which we have not recognized, and will never re- 
cognize. We pray Your Majesty, then, that being at length convinced 
of the baneful effects of the said Act, on the social institutions of this 
Province, the common rights of its inhabitants, and the settlement of 
the waste lands therein, without its containing one redeeming beneficial 
provision, but when, on the contrary, it has tended solely to favour the 
seigneur, while it professes to be intended for the relief of the mass of 
the censitaires, it may please Your Majesty to recommend to Your 
Parliament the immediate repeal of the said Act, in order that the Pro- 
vincial Legislature may be no longer prevented from enacting laws {as 
it has the right to do) on the numerous subjects which it has been pre- 
tended to regulate by the said Act, and in order that we in particular, 
as one branch of that Legislature, may do justice in that behalf to our 
constituents, in a manner adapted to their interests and their wants, 
with which we have better means of being acquainted than any autho- 
rity sitting without this Province, On the subject of the latter of the 
said Acts, we have, as well before it was passed, and with the know- 
ledge and approbation of Your Majesty's Ministers while it was in 
progress through the Houses of Parliament, as since that time, made 
equally numerous representations. We know that one of the effects of 
this Act, besides authorizing monopoly in improved lands already 
owned and occupied by the people of this Province, has been to con- 
firm the illegal sale of nearly a million of acres of the waste lands of 
this Province, made to the said company in addition to the unusual 
privileges it confers on the same company, with regard to the appli- 
cation of the proceeds of the said sale privileges which belong solely to 
the Provincial Legislature^ whose powers have been therein usurped. 
This subject is also closely connected with the incontestable right of 
British subjects inhabiting this Province, and of those who come to 
settle therein, not to be taxed without their free consent, expressed 
through their representatives. The said sale has also rendered impos- 
sible the free settlement of the most advantageous portion of the acces- 
sible lands, and, properly speaking, the only portion of these lands 
which had escaped the action of the system of fraud, speculation and 
monopoly which the servants of Your Majesty's Government in this 
Province have constantly maintained in this department. We humbly 
believe, that independently of the high considerations aforesaid, an 
essential point of the public law of the country has been lost sight of 
namely, that the waste lands of this Province are not, may it please 
your Majesty, of the same nature as the hereditary and patrimonial 
property belonging to Your Majesty's Crown, any more than they had 
that character luhen they were held by His Most Christiafi Majesty. 
They formed then, and we deem that they form at this day, part of 
the public domain of the state which in the several dependencies of the 
Empire^ is committed to Your Majesty's paternal care for the benefit of 



31 

their inhabitants, and of other subjects of Your Majesty who may wish 
to settle therein, and is subject to the supreme authority of Parlia- 
ment ; and we conceive that in this Province the Provincial Parlia- 
ment is fully and exclusively invested with this authority, the exercise 
of which we shallnever willingly renounce. We believe we have given 
too many proofs that we are perfectly disposed to exercise it for the 
advantage of all classes of Your Majesty's subjects, to render it pos- 
sible that any consideration foreign to the laws and constitution, should 
induce the Parliament of the United Kingdom or Your Majesty's 
Ministers forcibly to abridge, in this point, the rights of the Provincial 
Parliament. 

If other arguments than those drawn from constitutional law, and 
from the public law of the country, were requisite to demonstrate the 
correctness of the view we take of this question, we would say, that in 
practice, other portions of the public domain of this Province, which 
were a source of profit at an earlier period, have continued to be ad- 
ministered as having precisely the same character as before the cession 
of the country ; that in divers instances no objection has been raised to 
the various Acts of the Provincial Parliament on matters therewith 
connected; and that from the moment when the very Act which de- 
fines the forms of our present constitution went into operation (a cir- 
cumstance which cannot but have weight with Your Majesty), Your 
Majesty's Government has recognized the nature and destination of the 
waste lands of this Province by the very circumstance of reserving and 
continuing to this day to reserve a seventh part thereof to belong more 
particularly to the Crown, and to be under its special control. In- 
stead of this seventh, the executive authorities have taken possession 
of the whole of these lands, of which they have disposed for the per- 
sonal advantage of their members, and of their friends and subalterns, 
for the purpose of planting corruption in the representation and among 
the people, of securing an undue irresponsibility in the Provincial Ad- 
ministrations, and of withdrawing them altogether from the control and 
influence of this House. To justify their former waste, and to retain 
the same means of bad government for the future, the same authorities 
established as a doctrine what had theretofore been only a culpable act ; 
and these pretensions, rendered powerful by their own effects, have 
unhappily made their way to Your Majesty's Throne, and to the Su- 
preme Councils of the United Kingdom. 

Under the ancient government in Canada, the settlement of the 
wild laijds, under a system as regular and easy as possible, and adapted 
to the circumstances of the climate, the laws, manners and locality by 
the then inhabitants, and by others of their fellow-subjects who come 
to settle among them, was regarded as a point so essential, that a great 
portion of the ancient law of the country relates to this subject, and 
lays down rules which ensure the right of the population to obtain lots 
of land for the purpose of cultivating them, and which establish the 
relative rights of all the parties interested. We conceive, that the power 
of ensuring the efficiency of these laws, of modifying them, or enacting 
others in their stead in case of need, has devolved solely upon the 
Provincial Parliament. We regret that since the change of dominion 



32 

the exactions of certain seigneurs, and the undue favours which have 
been conferred on others under the Tenures' Act, on ihe one hand, and 
the pretensions of the Executive to dispose of these lands without con- 
trol on the other hand, have entirely nullified the advantages which 
were best adapted to advance the moral and physical welfare oi the 
people, and to give stability to their institutions and to their political 
existence, as a happy and affectionate portion of Your Majesty's sub- 
jects. We are sure that the people of Canada, of whatever origin, have 
equally had reason to complain of the vices and abuses above men- 
tioned. We cannot believe that while rights so essential were recog- 
nized and respected under an absolute monarchical government, the 
operation of the British constitution, thouu^h imperfect in its appli- 
cation to this Province, will be absolutely insufficient to maintain 
them. 

Your Majesty cannot but know that the climate of this portion of 
the world, and other peculiar causes, render the clearing of lands, in 
order to bring them under cultivation, one of the chief resources of the 
surplus population of the old settlements, and the surest mode of in- 
vesting the very moderate capital possessed by the people of the coun- 
try. The resources which the waste lands would afford in point of 
revenue, under a wise system of management, established under the 
authority of the Provincial Parliament, would be equally necessary as 
a provision for the support of Your Majesty's Provincial Government, 
and for the completion of the numerous local improvements made 
requisite by the increase of the population, the emigration from the 
United Kingdom, and the state of a rising country. These resources 
are so important in both these respects, that if left to the unrestrained 
disposal of the Executive, they would destroy the constitution, pur- 
chase the adherence of men made pov/erful by the authority vested in 
them, and give the administration ample pecuniary means equivalent 
to the other revenues of the Province, and, consequently, the power of 
governing arbitrarily in defiance of the authority of the Legislature. 
We state, as a fact, that such has been in effect the system which has 
prevailed in this Province, and has been an inexhaustible source of 
evils and abuses. We attach so much importance to this subject, that 
we are firm.ly of opinion, that without the legislative and constitutional 
authority of the Provincial Parliament over the lands of the Pro- 
vincial domain, and the revenue arising from them, the povfer vested 
in the Legislature to make laws for the peace, welfare and good 
government of this Province, would be altogether nugatory. Your 
Majesty may infer from this, how much we differ from Your Majesty's 
Minister, when in one of the extracts from despatches above men- 
tioned, while commenting on the tenure of public offices in the Pro- 
vince in a manner which seems to us but little applicable to the sub- 
ject, he appears, on the contrary, to wish to curtail the influence of the 
representatives of the people over the persons composing the admini- 
stration, because this House must be animated by a spirit of the people, 
while we regard this latter circumstance as a most fortunate one, and 
as a pledge for the due and efficient conduct of public officers, and for 
the security of those whose affairs they administer. 



33 

We therefore pray Your Majesty to be pleased to recommend to 
Parliament the repeal of the said Act passed in favour of the Land 
Company: and also that it may please your Majesty to adopt legal 
means for annulling all the undue privileges incompatible ivith the 
rights of this Province, which it is the object of the said Act to confirm, 
or of which it may have been the source. We also humbly pray Your 
Majesty to be graciously pleased, with regard to the matters relative 
to the pu 'die domain and the lands of this Province, to recognize the 
rights of its Legislature, and of Your faithful subjects therein, to the 
end that we be no longer prevented from labouring as a part of that 
Legislature, and, with the consent of Your Majesty as the first branch 
thereof, to render available all the resources of the subjects who inhabit 
this Province, or nfiay come to settle in it ; and more especially to en- 
sure to all without distinction the means of settling on the waste lands, 
under an easy system, and on such conditions as shall be found most 
advantageous. 

On the subject of the independence of the Judges, we see with plea- 
sure that there exists no difference between the views of Your Ma- 
jesty's Government and our own. We regret that our efforts to carry 
those views into effect have been misunderstood. Since that time the 
modifications which have rendered the character of the Legislative 
Council worse, while it was pretended to improve it, have convinced 
us that it would be of no advantage to the due administration of 
justice to proceed on the same basis. We shall not, however, abandon 
the consideration of the subject, and we shall attentively examine any 
plan which shall appear to us well adapted for the attainment of the 
desired end. 

What we have now said will sujfice to show Your Majesty what 
our views are, with regard to the politics of the colony as a whole, to 
the functions and powers which we believe to belong to the Provincial 
Legislature on all matters relative to the internal affairs of the colony, 
and with regard to what we conceive to he the best means of ensuring 
activity, efficiency and responsibility in the public service. We would 
suggest to Your Majesty, that there are on this portion of the American 
Continent more than 1,000,000 of Your Majesty's subjects, composing 
the Colonies of Upper and Lower Canada, who, speaking different 
languages, and having a great diversity of origin, laws, creeds, and 
manners, characteristics peculiar to them respectively, and which they 
have severally the right to preserve as inhabitants of a separate and 
distinct Province, have yet to come to the conclusion that the institu- 
tions common to the two countries ought to be essentially modified, 
and that it has become urgently necessary to reform the abuses which 
have up to this day prevailed in the administration of the Government. 
We rejoice that we have, in our just claims, the support of our brethren 
of Upper Canada. This support will demonstrate to Your Majesty, 
and to our fellow-subjects in all parts of the Empire, that we have 
been sincere in our declarations, that the circumstances and wants of 
the two Canadian Provinces do indeed require a responsible and po- 
pular government, and that we have been actuated by no narrow views of 



34 

party or of origin in demanding for many years of Your Majesty that 
such a government may be granted us. 

With regard to the protection and to the equality of rights which 
Your Majesty's subjects in this Province are entitled to, the remedy of 
evils and abuse, the abohtion of sinecures and pluralities, the expected 
formation of an Executive Council on the principles above set forth, 
and to divers other subjects more particularly mentioned in the speech 
from the Throne at the opening of the present session, we refer to our 
answer to his Excellency the Governor-in-chief, and we ardently wish 
that the views and instructions of Your Majesty's Government on 
essential points, may be of a nature to facilitate the results which Your 
Majesty's representative has been pleased to promise, and which it 
will afford us the most lively satisfaction to see attained. 

In the extracts from despatches hereinbefore cited, there are certain 
passages which induce us to believe that we have not made ourselves 
understood by Your Majesty's Government, with regard to the nature 
of the control we desire for the Provincial Legislature over the waste 
lands of the public domain of the province, and v/hich might cause 
some misapprehension in the opinion of our fellow-subjects. We have 
never claimed to exercise over this portion of the affairs of the Govern- 
ment, any other authority than the parliamentary and constitutional 
authority which we are entitled to exercise over all the other affairs of 
the country, in so far as the peace, welfare, and good government of 
the country may be therein concerned. We have already set forth at 
length our reasons for believing that this authority belongs to us. On 
this head, as on all others, our wish is, that the due execution of the 
laws may remain in the hands of the Executive authority within the 
limits prescribed by the laws and the constitution, and under the neces- 
sary responsibility ; but we also wish that the right of the Assembly of 
the Province to legislate on these subjects, jointly with the other 
branches of the Legislature, and to exercise in this behalf the other 
powers of the Commons of the country, may receive its full applica- 
tion. We believe we have demonstrated the fatal results of the systems 
in which this wholesome doctrine has been lost sight of, and of the 
necessity which exists that their effects should be remedied by laws, in 
the making of which we have «a right to participate. We should 
esteem ourselves happy if this explanation of our views remove any 
unintentional mistake into which Your Majesty's Government may 
have fallen, in construing our former representation. If we have in 
them dwelt more especially on this subject, it is because, until lately, 
it was enveloped in this province in a system of secrecy, by which the 
rights of the Provincial Parliament were violated and rendered nuga- 
tory, and which has been most injurious to the interests of the Govern- 
ment, and also because Your Majesty's Ministers seem to agree in the 
opinion that these matters should be withdrawn from the legislative and 
parliamentary control of the Provincial Parliament. If, on this occa- 
sion, we repeat our claims, it is because the more recent opinions of the 
same servants of Your Majesty have appeared to us to have the same 
tendency. On the subject of the waste lands, we shall here add that 



35 

we consider them as of much greater importance, with regard to their 
free settlement, than with regard to the immediate pecuniary revenue 
which might be derived from them by disposing of them at too high a 
price, or in larger portions than would suffice to meet the demands of 
such of Your Majesty's subjects as should be disposed personally to 
cultivate and settle on them. 

It remains for us to address Your Majesty on an important and ex- 
tensive subject, the public revenue and expenditure of this Province. 
We humbly thank Your Majesty for the gracious declaration that Your 
Majesty is disposed to admit the control of the representatives of the 
people over the whole public revenue raised in the Province. We 
regard the fulfilment of this promise as of the highest importance. In 
stating explicitly in the preceding portion of this Address, the rights 
which we humbly believe to belong to the Legislature of this Province, 
with regard to certain parts of this revenue, we wish to present the 
subject in its true point of view, in order that no misconception may 
hereafter retard the desired result. In the proposal which it may 
please Your Majesty to make to us for the purpose of attaining this 
result, it is impossible that Your Majesty should lose sight of the essen- 
tial principles of the constitution, or of the Declaratory Act of 1778, to 
the benefits of vi^hich we believe the people of this country are peculiarly 
entitled. We shall receive with respect, and examine with the most 
scrupulous attention, any communication which Your Majesty may be 
pleased to make to us, tending to the settlement of the financial ques- 
tions. We believe, however, that any merely temporary arrangement 
made as a matter of expediency, and not carrying with it the recogni- 
tion of the principles we have supported, could not have the desired 
effect, but would sooner or later bring back the very difficulties with 
which we are now contending. We humbly represent to Your Ma- 
jesty, that the people of this Province, tired of the continued struggle in 
which they have been so long engaged, to obtain the recognition of 
their rights on the part of the metropolitan and colonial authorities, 
would regard with painful apprehension the possibility of the recurrence 
of the same state of things, and of the necessity of making new sacri- 
fices for the purpose of laying these complaints before Your Majesty 
and Parliament. We w^sh for Government which shall assure us 
freedom and security ; the unrestricted effect of Your Majesty's decla- 
rations can alone confer it on us, and it will be when we possess it, and 
can entertain a hope of the removal of the grievances and abuses that 
we complain of, that we can properly consider the means of giving 
effect to Your Majesty's wishes with regard to an appropriation of a 
permanent nature. With respect to the extension of any appropriation 
of this nature, beyond what we have hitherto thought to be reasonable, 
it will be impossible for us to to.ke the subject into consideration until 
after the views of Your Majesty's Government, with regard to the 
details, shall have been made known to us. We must, however, de- 
clare, that having represented to Your Majesty our views with regard 
to the efficiency and responsibility which we wish to see established in 
the Provincial Government, we should think we failed in our duty to 
our constituents, if we destroy that efficiency and that responsibility by 



36 

placing, as a general rule, the great public functionaries of the Pro- 
vince beyond the reach of the wholesome action of the constitution. 
We are not actuated by any considerations of a merely pecuniary 
nature; we believe that the largest sums Your Majesty's Government 
could ask for, would be utterly insignificant, in comparison with those 
for which Your Majesty's servants in this Province have been defaulters, 
or the enormous sums expended out of the public revenue, without the 
authority of the Provincial Legislature, and even in opposition to the 
votes of this House ; or in comparison with the waste of the public 
property, by which four millions of acres of land, or more, scarcely an 
eighth part of which has yet been settled, have been monopolized or 
alienated. But we earnestly desire to preserve the benefit of a just 
control on the part of the Legislature, over the several branches of the 
Provincial Executive, and we can never consent, by renour^cing it, to 
confound all the powers of the state for the time to come. 

The pretensions set up by the Executive authority to the exclusive 
disposal of considerable portions of the public revenue of this Province 
have been so different and so variable, that we shall ever consider it a 
fortunate circumstance that the discussion of these questions, as far as 
principles are concerned, has been closed by the general declaration, for 
which we have already expressed our gratitude to Your Majesty. But 
we cannot admit that our present claims are at variance with our ante- 
rior acts, as Your Majesty's Minister supposes. If we could consent 
to retaliate, and continue the discussion, we might say, that the con- 
trol of the Provincial Legislature over the sources of revenue in ques- 
tion has been recognised by a long course of practice ; that with 
rega/d to the casual and territorial revenue, the message of his Excel- 
lency, Lord Dorchester, in the year 1794, was then, and has ever since 
been interpreted in the Province, and even by the Royal authority in 
assenting to divers Bills passed by the Provincial Parliament, in such 
manner as to leave no doubt on the subject; we might then regard 
the more recent pretensions of the Executive as of a nature altogether 
unexpected. But, omitting these arguments, we appeal only to the 
principles of the constitutional and public law of the colony, and the 
very nature of these sources of revenue, which, we believe, we have 
sufficiently set forth. 

There is another point connected with the casual and territorial 
revenue of which we ought not to omit to speak. The very definition 
of this revenue, and the particular sources from which it is derived, 
demonstrate that it extends to all resources which may be derived from 
Your Majesty's public domain in this Province. Lord Dorchester, in 
the message abovementioned, confirms this conclusion in speaking of the 
sources of revenue from which no profit had then been derived ; and 
his Excellency, Lord Aylmer, had very recently included the revenue 
arising from the sale of lands and the cutting of timber in the casual 
and territorial revenue. Your Majesty, therefore, will not see without 
surprise, that Your Ministers and servants, feeling that the control of 
the Provincial Parliament must sooner or later be exercised over the 
said casual and territorial revenue; compelled, moreover, to acknow- 
ledge that in any case this revenue could not be applied otherwise 



37 

than to the wants of the Civil Government and of the administration of 
justice ; and desirous of creating funds which might be otherwise ap- 
plied, and might enable them to indulge the spirit of favouritism, and 
perpetuate their system of bad government, have endeavoured to sepa- 
rate from the said casual and territorial revenue the most important 
and extensive portion of it, namely, the whole of the waste lands and 
saleable timber in this Province; and they appear to have assigned to 
the fund which they thus procured by the sale oj the said lands and 
timber^ without lawful authority^ the name of Your Jy/ajesty's Here- 
ditary Revenue. It is sufficient to examine the purposes to which this 
part of the revenue has for many years been applied, to be convinced 
that our opinion of this application is by no means erroneous, and that 
these purposes have only an almost infinitely distant relation to the 
essential wants of the Civil Government, and of ihe administration of 
justice, for which the casuaLand territorial revenue is destined. From 
this administrative manceuvre it follows, as a necessary consequence, 
that in the hands of Your Majesty's servants, to whom the manage- 
ment of the territorial domain is entrusted, the waste lands will be 
alienated with a view to the immediate increase of this uncontrolled 
revenue, instead of being managed with a sage foresight, founded on 
the consideration of the resources which these lands offer for the future, 
and of their settlement by Your Majesty's subjects. It seems to be 
intended that this revenue should be enormously increased by the pro- 
ceeds of the sale to the Land Company. On this latter subject we 
pray Your Majesty to be pleased to exclude from the revenue over 
which you have been graciously pleased to encourage the hope of seeing 
the control of the Legislature of this Province established, all sums 
arising from alienations in favour of the said Company. We hold the 
unrestrained access to so great an extent of the ivaste lands, to be too 
valuable to Your Majesty's subjects who inhabit this Province, or who 
may hereafter come to settle therein, to allow us to barter away their 
rights for any pecuniary considerations whatsoever, or by acknow- 
ledging the validity of the said alienations. We are, therefore, bound 
to abide by the requests herein above made to Your Majesty. 

We humbly thank Your Majesty that, if we rightly understand 
Your gracious intentions, the announced recognition of the control of 
the Provincial Legislature over the whole revenue extends equally to 
the sources of revenue thus separated from the casual and territorial 
revenue. This extension will have the effect of preventing, for the 
future, the consequences of the system heretofore followed. We ob- 
serve, however, that Your Majesty is desirous of maintaining, under 
any final arrangement, the charges to the payment of which this par- 
ticular revenue has hitherto been applied, and which are considered as 
permanent. We have already expressed our opinion as to the nature 
of these charges. Your Majesty cannot doubt our readiness to make 
every provision which may be necessary to ensure the efficient and 
beneficial management of the said lands and timber. We shall like- 
wise give our attention to the nature of the other charges, with the 
view of making the result of our deliberations known to Your Majesty's 
G.overnment. We have, however, already declared that we could not 

P 



38 

recognize the sinecures created under the Tenures' Act. With regard 
to the several pensions which have hitherto been paid out of this fund, 
it is our wish to express no premature opinion here ; and we shall 
merely remind Your Majesty that they have hitherto been in opposi- 
tion to the determination of this House. If we see tlie desired 
arrangement effected, we shall receive with respect, and shall take into 
consideration with the liberality we have always exercised (regard 
being had to the circumstances of each case, and to the resources of the 
country), all recommendations from Your Majesty requesting appro- 
priations on our part, of the public monies for constitutional pur- 
poses. 

Having thus exposed our opinions on the essential points of the 
extracts from despatches which have come to our knowledge, we refer 
00 all other points to our humble petitions to Your Majesty and Your 
Parliament of the 1st* of March, 1834, and the 28th of February, 
1835, in which we persevere. We beg leave to call Your Majesty's 
royal attention to the essential reforms we have pointed out in the 
former part of this address, and which we believe to be indispensable. 
Declaring ourselves unsatisfied with the views and intentions of Your 
Majesty's Ministers, we address ourselves to Your Majesty and Your 
Parliavient, in order that our just claims may be listened to, and that 
Your Majesty's Government in this Province may be rendered consti- 
tutional and responsible, and possess the confidence of your faithful 
subjects. We have frequently regretted that the destinies of the inha- 
bitants of this portion of the British empire should depend almost solely 
on a colonial minister on the other side of the ocean, acting for the 
most part on incorrect data, and on an imperfect knowledge of facts, 
and left to act on his own responsibility. We also venture humbly to 
express our regret, that in the discussion of colonial questions in ge- 
neral it has not been thought right to attach sufficient importance to 
them to place them among the number of those on which the public 
confidence in Your Majesty's Government depends. We have suffered 
and still suffer from this state of things, and we believe that it would 
be best remedied by the action in the Province itself of a government 
at once popular and respected. 

In the position in which we are placed, and however unjust the 
projects of the Colonial Office may appear, it is yet our wish to give 
Your Majesty a proof of our desire for conciliation and peace. We 
have expressed our regret that, according to the extracts from de- 
spatches above cited, even the temporary arraiigement alluded to by 
Your Majesty's representative cannot take place unless this House vir- 
tually admits the control of the Executive over funds which we believe 
to belong to us, nor unless these funds remain hereafter as they have 
done heretofore, and for a term of 2uhich it is impossible to ascertain 
the extent, subject to charges created by the mere authority of the Ex- 
ecutive, and which it regards as permanent. We are however resolved 

* The address of tlie 1st March, 1834, consisted of the 92 Resolutions of the 
21st February, 1834; see the next document, No. 3. The address of the 28th 
February, 1835, contained nothing which is not in the three papers now published, 
excepting some complaints of the Governor and others, 



39 

to neglect nothing which can afford to Your Majesty and Your Parlia- 
ment an opportunity to do us justice, and to the present administration 
of this Province the means of effecting such reforms as the vices of the 
system permit ; and we have determined to provide for the expences 
of the Provincial Government for a limited time, regard being had to 
the circumstances attending the several items, and the resources of 
the country. We pray that Your Majesty will attribute the manner 
in which we shall endeavour to give effect to the decision we have 
thus come to solely to our sincere desire to obtain a better govern- 
ment, and not to any abandonment of the principles we have sup- 
ported; and that Your Majesty will not allow it to be made a subject 
of reproach to us when we may again hereafter insist on these princi- 
ples. It is with the view of maintaining them, and of obtaining Your 
Majesty's decision and that of Your Parliament on the weighty 
matters we have set forth, and the removal of grievances and abuses, 
that we have })ostponed the consideration of the other demands 
which would have necessitated a further departure from what we 
believe to be the constitutional rights of the people. We expect full 
justice from the august tribunal to which we appeal ; and we trust 
that the Provincial Parliament will be called together for its next 
session so as to enable us to continue as early as possible our labours 
for the welfare of the country, and reassured, by the justice and libe- 
rality of the measures we expect, to consider the means of finally 
arranging the difficulties existing in the government of this Province, 
and of giving strength, stability, and public confidence thereto. 

Wherefore we respectfully entreat Your Majesty to listen favourably 
to our humble prayer, and, as well by the exercise of the august 
powers which belong more especially to Your Majesty, as jointly 
with the Parliament of the United Kingdom, to render full justice 
to your faithful subjects, and to deliver them from the oppressions and 
bad government which, through colonial ministers, have long weighed 
heavily upon them. And by inclination led, as well as by duty bound, 
we shall ever pray for Your Majesty's sacred person. 

(Signed) L. J. PAPINEAU, 

Speaker of the House of Assembly. 

House of Assembly , Quebec, 
26 February, 1836. 



III. 

Resolutions of the House of Assembly of Lower Canada^ 
dated Quebec, Friday, 21 February, 1834. 

1. Resolved, That His Majesty's loyal subjects, the people of this 
Province of Lower Canada, have shown the strongest attachment to 
the British Empire, of which they are a portion : that they have re- 
peatedly defended it with courage in time of war ; that at the time 

D 2 



40 

which preceded the Independence of the late British Colonies on this 
continent, they resisted the appeal made to them by those Colonies to 
join their confederation. 

2. Resolved, That the people of this Province have at all times 
manifested their confidence in His Majesty's Government, even under 
circumstances of the greatest difficulty, and when the government of 
the Province has been administered by men who trampled under foot 
the rights and feelings dearest to British subjects; and that these sen- 
timents of the people of this Province remain unchanged. 

3. Resolved, That the people of this Province have always shown 
themselves ready to welcome and receive as brethren, those of their 
fellow^ subjects, who, having quitted the United Kingdom or its depen- 
dencies, have chosen this Province as their home, and have earnestly 
endeavoured (as far as on them depended) to aflbrd every facility to 
their participating in the political advantages, and in the means of ren- 
dering their industry available, which the people of this Province 
enjoy ; and to remove for them the difficulties arising from the vicious 
system adopted by those who have administered the government of the 
Province, with regard to those portions of the country which the New- 
comers have generally chosen to settle. 

4. Resolved, That this House, as representing the people of this 
Province, has shown an earnest zeal to advance the general prosperity 
of the country, by securing the peace and content of all classes of its 
inhabitants, without any distinction of origin or creed, and upon the 
solid and durable basis of unity of interest, and equal confidence in 
the protection of the Mother Country. 

5. Resolved, That this House has seized every occasion to adopt, 
and firmly to establish by Law in this Province, not only the Constitu- 
tional and Parliamentary Law of England, which is necessary to carry 
the Government into operation, but also all such partsof the public law 
of the United Kingdom as have appeared to this House adapted to 
promote the welfare and safety of the People, and to be conformable to 
their wishes and their wants ; and that this House has, in like man- 
ner, wisely endeavoured so to regulate its proceedings, as to render 
them as closely as the circumstances of this Colony permit, analogous 
to the practice of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. 

6. Resolved, That in the year 1827, the great majority of the people 
of this Province complained, in Petitions signed by 87,000 persons, of 
serious and numerous abuses which then prevailed, many of which 
had then existed for a great number of years, and of which the greater 
part still exist without correction or mitigation. 

7. Resolved, That the complaints aforesaid, and the grievances 
which gave rise to them, being submitted to the consideration of the 
Parliament of the United Kingdom, occasioned the appointment of a 
Committee of the House of Commons, of which the Honourable 
Edward Geoffrey Stanley, now His Majesty's Principal Secretary of 
State for the Colonial Department, and several others who are now 
Members of His Majesty's Government, formed part ; and that after a 
careful investigation and due deliberation, the said Committee, on the 
18th July, 1828, came to the following very just conclusions : 



41 

Istly. ''That the embarrassments and discontents that had 
long prevailed in the Canadas, had arisen from serious defects 
in the system of Laws, and the Constitutions established in those 
Colonies. 

2ndly. *' That these embarrassments were in a great measure 
to be attributed to the manner in which the existing system had 
been administered. 

3dly. " That they had a complete conviction that neither the 
suggestions which they had made, nor any other improvements in 
the laws and constitutions of the Canadas, will be attended with 
the desired effect, unless an impartial, conciliating and constitu- 
tional system of government were observed in these royal and im- 
portant Colonies." 

8. Resolved, That since the period aforesaid, the constitution of this 
Province, with its serious defects, has continued to be administered in a 
manner calculated to multiply the embarrassments and discontents 
which have long prevailed ; and that the recommendationsof the Com- 
mittee of the House of Commons have not been followed by eflPeclive 
measures of a nature to produce the desired effect. 

9. Resolved, That the most serious defect in the Constitutional 
Act — its radical fault — the most active principle of evil and discon- 
tent in the Province; the most powerful and most frequent cause of 
abuses of power ; of infractions of the laws ; of the waste of the 
public revenue and property, accompanied by impunity to the governing 
party, and the oppression and consequent resentment of the governed, 
is that injudicious enactment, the fatal results of which were foretold 
by the Honourable Charles James Fox at the time of its adoption, 
which invests the Crown with that exorbitant power, {incompatible 
with any government duly balanced and founded on law and jus- 
tice, and not on force and coercion) of selecting and composing without 
any rule or limitation, or any predetermined qualification, an entire 
branch of the legislature, supposed from the nature of its attributions 
to he independent, but inevitably the servile tool of the authority 
which creates, composes and decotnposes it, and can on any day modify 
it to suit the interests or the passions of the moment. 

10. Resolved, That with the permission of a power so unlimited, 
the abuse of it is inseparably connected ; and that it has always been 
so exercised in the selection of the Members of the Legislative Council 
of this Province, as to favour the spirit of monoply and despotism in 
the executive, judicial and administrative departments of government, 
and never in favour of the public interests. 

1 1 . Resolved, That the effectual remedy for this evil was judiciously 
foreseen and pointed out by the Committee of the House of Commons, 
who asked John Neilson, Esquire (one of the Agents who had carried 
to England the Petition of the 87,000 inhabitants of Lower Canada) 
whether he had turned in his mind any plan by which he conceived the 
Legislative Council might be better composed in Lower Canada; 
whether he thou^^ht it possible that the said body could command the 
confidence and respect of the people, or go in harmony with the House 
of Assembly, unless the principle of election were introduced into its 



42 

composition in some manner or other ; and also, whether he thought 
that the Colony could have any security that the Legislative Council 
would be properly and independently composed, unless the principle of 
election w^ere introduced into it in some manner or other ; and received 
from the said John Neilson answers, in which (among other reflections) 
he said in substance, that there were two modes in which the compo- 
sition of the Legislative Council might be bettered ; the one by ap- 
pointing men who were independent of the Executive, (but that to 
judge from experience there would be no security that this would 
be done), and that if this mode were found impracticable, the other 
would be to render the Legislative Council elective. 

12. Resolved, That, judging from experience, this House likewise 
believes there would be no security in the first mentioned mode, the 
course of events having but too amply proved what was then foreseen ; 
and that this House approves all the inferences drawn by the said John 
Neilson from experience and facts ; but that with regard to his sugges- 
tion that a class of electors of a higher qualification should be esta- 
blished, or a qualification in property fixed for those persons who might 
sit in the Council, this House have, in their Address to His Most 
Gracious Majesty, dated the 20th March 1833, declared in what man- 
ner this principle could, in their opinion, be rendered tolerable in 
Canada, by restraining it within certain bounds, which should in no 
case be passed. 

13. Resolved, That even in defining bounds of this nature, and 
requiring the possession of real property as a condition of eligibility 
to a Legislative Council, chosen by the people, which most wisely and 
happily has not been made a condition of eligibility to the House of 
Assembly, this House seems rather to have sought to avoid shocking 
received opinions in Europe, where custom and the law have given so 
many artificial privileges and advantages to birth and rank and fortune, 
than to consult the opinions generally received in America, where the 
influence of birth is nothing, and where, notwithstanding the impor- 
tance vvhich fortune must always naturally confer, the artifical intro- 
duction of great political privileges in favour of the possessors of large 
property, could not long resist the preference given at free elections to 
virtue, talents and information, which fortune does not exclude but can 
never purchase, and which may be the portion of honest, contented 
and devoted men, whom the people ought to have the power of calling 
and consecrating to the public service, in preference to richer men, of 
whom they may think less highly. 

14. Resolved, That this House is no wise disposed to admit the ex- 
cellence of the present Constitution of Canada, although His Ma- 
jesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies has unseasonably and 

erroneously asserted, that it has conferred on the two Canadas the in- 
stitutions of Great Britain ; nor to reject the principle of extending 
the system of frequent elections much further than it is at present car- 
ried ; and this system ought especially to be extended to the Legisla- 
tive Council, although it may he considered by the Colonial Secretary 
incompatible with the British Government, which he calls a Monarchical 
Government, or too analogous to the institutions which the several, 



43 

States, composing the industrious, moral and prosperous confederation 
of the United States of America, have adopted for themselves. 

15. Resolved, That in a Despatch, of which the date is unknown, 
and of which a part only was communicated to this House by the 
Governor-in-Chief on the 14th January, 1834, His Majesty's Secretary 
of State for the Colonial Department (this House having no certain 
knowledge whether the said Despatch is from the present Colonial 
Secretary or from his predecessor) says, that an examination of the 
composition of the Legislative Council at that period (namely, at the 
time when its composition was so justly censured by a Committee of 
the House of Commons) and at the present, will sufficiently show in 
what spirit His Majesty's Government has endeavoured to carry the 
wishes of Parliament into effect. 

16. Resolved, That this House receives with gratitude this assurance 
of the just and benevolent intentions, with which, in the performance 
of their duty, His Majesty's Ministers have endeavoured to give effect 
to the wishes of Parliament. 

17. Resolved, That unhappily it was left to the principal Agent of 
His Majesty's Government in this Province to carry the wishes of the 
Imperial Parliament into effect ; but that he has destroyed the hope 
which His Majesty's faithful subjects had conceived of seeing the Le- 
gislative Council reformed and ameliorated, and has confirmed them in 
the opinion that the only possible mode of giving to that body the 
weight and respectability which it ought to possess, is to introduce into 
it the principle of election. 

18. Resolved, That the Legislative Council, strengthened by a ma- 
jority inimical to the rights of this House and of the people whom it 
represents, has received new and more powerful means than it before 
possessed of perpetuating and of rendering more offensive and more 
hurtful to the country the system of abuses of which the people of this 
Province have up to this day ineffectually complained, and which up 
to this day Parliament and His Majesty's Government in England have 
ineffectually sought to correct. 

19. Resolved, That since its pretended reform the Legislative Council 
has, in a manner more calculated to alarm the inhabitants of this Pro- 
vince, and more particularly in its address to His Majesty of the 1st of 
April, 1833, renewed its pretension of being specially appointed to 
protect one class of His Majesty's subjects in this Province, as suppos- 
ing them to have interests which could not be sufficiently represented 
in the Assembly, seven-eighths of the Members of which are by the 
said Council most erroneously stated to be of French origin and speak 
the French language : that this pretension is a violation of the consti- 
tution, and is of a nature to excite and perpetuate among the several 
classes of the inhabitants of this Province mutual distrust and national 
distinctions and animosities, and to give one portion of the people an 
unjust and factious superiority over the other, and the hope of domi- 
nation and undue preference. 

20. Resolved, That by such claim the Legislative Council, after a 
reform which was held up as one adapted to unite it more closely with 
the interests of the Colony in conformity with the wishes of Parliament, 



44 

calls down, a&oneof its first acts, the prejudices and severity of His 
Majesty's Government upon the people of this Province, and upon the 
representative branch of the Legislature thereof; and that by this con- 
duct the Legislative Council has destroyed amongst the people all 
hope which was left them of seeing the said Council, so long as it shall 
remain constituted as it now is, act in harmony with the House of 
Assembly. 

21. Resolved, That the Legislative Council of this Province has 
never been any thing else but an impotent screen between the Governor 
and the people, which by enabling the one to maintain a conflict ivith 
the other, has served to perpetuate a system of discord and contention ; 
that it has unceasingly acted with avowed hostility to the sentiments of 
the people as constitutionally expressed by the House of Assembly ; 
that it is not right under the name of a Legislative Council to impose 
an aristocracy on a country which contains no natural materials for the 
composition of such a body ; that the Parliament of the United King- 
dom in granting to His Majesty's Canadian subjects the power of re- 
vising the constitution under which they hold their dearest rights, 
would adopt a liberal policy, free from all considerations of former 
interests and of existing prejudices ; and that by this measure, equally 
consistent w\i\i a wise and sound policy, and with the most liberal and 
extended views, the Parliament of the United Kingdom would enter 
into a noble rivalry with the United States of America, would prevent 
His Majesty's subjects from seeing any thing to envy there} and would 
preserve a friendly intercourse between Great Britain and this Province, 
as her Colony so long as the tie between us shall continue, and as 
her Ally whenever the course of events may change our relative 
position^ 

22. Resolved, That this House so much the more confidently emits 
the opinions expressed in the precedii g Resolution, because, if any 
faith is to be placed in the published reports, they were at no distant 
period emitted with other remarks in the same spirit, in the Commons 
House of the United Kin^^dom, by the Right Honourable Edward 
Geoffrey Stanley, now His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for 
the Colonial Department, and by several other enlightened and distin- 
guished Members, some of whom are among the number of His Ma- 
jesty's present Ministers; and because the conduct of the Legislative 
Council since its pretended reform, demonstrates that the said opinions 
are in no wise rendered less applicable or less correct by its present 
composition. 

23. Resolved, That the Legislative Council has at the present time 
less community of interest with the Province than at any former period ; 
that its present composition, instead of being calculated to change the 
character of the body, to put an end to complaints, and to bring 
about that co-operation of the two Houses of the Legislature which is 
so necessary to the welfare of the Country, is such as to destroy ail 
hope that the said Council will adopt the opinions and sentiments of 
the people of this Province, and of this House with regard to the in- 
alienable right of the latter to the full and entire control of the whole, 
revenue raided in the Province, with regard to the necessity under 



45 

which this House has found itself (for the purpose of effecting the 
reformation which it has so long and so vainly demanded of existing 
abuses) to provide for the expenses of the Civil Government by annual 
appropriations only, as well as with regard to a variety of other ques- 
tions of public interest, concerning which the Executive Government, 
and the Legislative Council which it has selected and created, differ 
diametrically from the people of this Province and from this House. 

24. Resolved, That such of the recently appointed Councillors as 
were taken from the majority of the Assembly, and had entertained the 
hope that a sufficient number of independent men, holding opinions in 
unison with those of the majority of the people and of their Represen- 
tatives, would be associated with them, must now feel that they are 
overwhelmed by a majority hostile to the Country, and composed of 
men who have irretrievably lost the public confidence, by showing 
themselves the blind and passionate partisans of all abuses of power, by 
encouraging all the acts of violence committed under the administra- 
tion of Lord Dalhousie, by having on all occasions outraged the repre- 
sentatives of the people of the Country ; of men, unknown in the 
Country until within a few years, without landed property or having 
very little, most of whom have never been returned to the Assembly 
(some of them I aving even been refused by the people), and who have 
never given any proofs of their fitness for performing the functions of 
Legislators, but merely of their hatred to the Country ; and who, by 
reason of their community of sentiment with him, have found them- 
selves, by the partiality of the Governor-in-Chief, suddenly raised to a 
station in which they have the power of exerting during life an influence 
over the legislation and over the fate of this Province, the laws and 
institutions of which have ever been ihe objects of their dislike. 

25. Resolved, That in manifest violation of the Constitution, there 
are among the persons last mentioned several who were born citizens of 
the United States, or are natives of other foreign countries, and who at 
the time of their appointment had not been naturalized by Acts of the 
British Parliament; that the residence of one of these persons (Horatio 
Gates) in this Country during the last war with the United States was 
only tolerated; he refused to take up arms for the defence of the 
Country in which he remained merely for the sake of lucre; and after 
these previous facts, took his seat in the Legislative Council on the 16th 
March, 1833; and fifteen days afterwards, to wit, on the 1st Aprils 
voted for the Address before mentioned, censuring those who during 
the last war were under arms on the frontiers to repulse the attacks of 
the American armies and of the fellow-citizens of the said Horatio 
Gates : that another (James Baxter) was resident during the said late 
war within the United States, and was bound by the laws of the coun- 
try of his birth, under certain circumstances forcibly to invade this 
Province, to pursue, destroy, and capture, if possible, His Majesty's 
armies, and such of His Canadian subjects as were in arms upon the 
frontiers to repulse the attacks of the American armies, and of the said 
James Baxter, who (being at the said time but slightly qualified as far 
as property is concerned) became by the nomination of the Governor- 
in-Chief, a legislator for life in Lower Canada, on the 22nd of March, 



46 

1833; and eight days afterwards, on the 1st of April aforesaid, voted 
that very Address which contained the calumnious and insulting; accu- 
sation which called for the expression of His Majesty's just regret, 
" that any word had been introduced which should have the appear- 
ance of ascribing to a class of his subjects of one origin, views at vari- 
ance with the allegiance which they owe to His Majesty." 

2^i. Resolved, That it was in the power of the present Governor-in- 
Chief, more than in that of any of his predecessors (by reason of the 
latitude allowed him as to the number and the selection of the persons 
whom he might nominate to be Members of the Legislative Council) to 
allay, for a time at least, the intestine divisions which rend this Colony, 
and to advance some steps towards the accomplishment of the wishes 
of Parliament, by inducing a community of interest between the said 
Council and the people, atid by giving the former a more independent 
character by judicious nominations. 

27. Resolved, That although sixteen persons have been nominated 
in less than two years by the present Governor to be Members of the 
said Council (a number greater than that afforded by any period of 
ten years under any other iVd ministration), and notwithstanding the 
wishes of Parhament, and the instructions given by His Majesty's 
Government for the removal of the grievances of which the people had 
complained, the same mahgn influence which has been exerted to per- 
petuate in the country a system of irresponsibility in favour of public 
functionaries, has prevailed to such an extent as to render the majority 
of the Legislative Council more inimical to the country than at any 
former period ; and that this fact confirms with irresistible force the 
justice of the censure passed by the Committee of the House of Com- 
mons on the constitution of the Legislative Council as it had theretofore 
existed, and the correctness of the opinion of those Members of the 
said Committee who thought that the said body could never command 
the respect of the people, nor be in harmony with the House of Assem- 
bly, unless the principle of election wa=i introduced into it. 

28. Resolved, That even if the present Governor-in-Chief had, by 
making a most judicious selection, succeeded in quieting the alarm and 
allaying for a time the prof ound discontent which then prevailed, that 
form of government would not he less essentially vicious which makes 
the happiness or misery of a country depend on an Executive over 
which the people of that country have no influence, and which has no 
permanent interest in the country, or in common with its inhabitants ; 
and that the extension of the elective principle is the only measure 
which appears to this House to afford any prospect of equal and suffi- 
cient protection in future to all the inhabitants of the Province without 
distinction. 

29. Resolved, That the accusations preferred against the House of 
Assembly by the Legislative Council, as recomposed by the present 
Governor-in-Chief, would be criminal and seditious, if their very nature 
did not render them harmless, since they go to assert, that if in its 
liberality and justice the Parliament of the United Kingdom had 
granted the earnest prayer of this House in behalf of the Province 
(and which this House at this solemn moment, after weighing the Dis- 



47 

patches of the Secretary of State for the Colonial Department, and on 
the eve of a general election, now repeats and renews), that the consti- 
tution of the Legislative Council may be altered by rendering it elec- 
tive, the result of this act of justice and benevolence would have been 
to inundate the country with blood. 

30. Resolved, That by the said Address to His Majesty, dated the 
1st of April last, the Legislative Council charges this House with 
having calumniously accused the King's Representative of partiality 
and injustice in the exercise of the powers of his office, and with deli- 
berately calumniating His Majesty's officers, both civil and military, as 
a faction induced by interest alone to contend for the support of a Go- 
vernment inimical to the rights and opposed to the wishes of the 
people : with reference to which this House declares that the accusa- 
tions preferred by it have never been calumnious, but are true and well 
founded, and that a faithful picture of the Executive Government of 
this Province in all its parts is drawn by the Legislative Council in this 
passage of its Address. 

31. Resolved, That if, as this House is fond of believing His Ma- 
jesty's Government in England does not wish systematically to nourish 
civil discord in this Colony, the contradictory allegations thus made by 
the two Houses make it imperative on it to become better acquainted 
with the state of the Province than it now appears to be, if we judge 
from its long tolerance of the abuses which its agents commit with im- 
punity ; that it ought not to trust to the self-praise of those who have 
the management of the affairs of a colony, passing according to them 
into a state of anarchy ; that it ought to be convinced that if its pro- 
tection of public functionaries, accused by a competent authority (that 
is to say by this Mouse, in the name of the people), could for a time, 
by force and intimidation, aggravate, in favour of those functionaries 
and against the^rights and interests of the people, the system of insult 
and oppression which they impatiently bear, the result must be to 
weaken our confidence in, and our attachment to His Majesty's Go- 
vernment, and to give deep root to the discontent and insurmountable 
disgust which have been excited by administrations deplorably vicious, 
and which are now excited by the majority of the public functionaries 
of the Colony, combined as a faction, and induced by interest alone to 
contend for the support of a corrupt Government, inimical to the rights 
and opposed to the wishes of the people, 

32. Resolved, That in addition to its wicked and calumnious Address 
of the 1st April, 1833, the Legislative Council, as recomposed by the 
present Governor-in-Chief, has proved how little community of interest 
it has with the Colony, by the fact that out of sixty-four Bills which 
were sent up to it, twenty-eight were rejected by it, or amended in a 
manner contrary to their spirit and essence; that the same unanimity 
which had attended the passing of the greater part of t.hese Bills in the 
Assembly, accompanied their rejection by the Legislative Council, and 
that an opposition so violent shows clearly that the provincial executive 
and the council of its choice, in league together against the representa- 
tive body, do not, or will not, consider it as the faithful interpreter and 
the equitable judge of the wants and wishes of the people, nor as fit to 



48 

propose laws conformable to the public will ; and that under such cir- 
cumstances it would have been the duty of the head of the executive to 
appeal to the people, by dissolving the Provincial Parliament, had there 
been any analogy between the institutions of Great Britain and those 
of this Province. 

33. Resolved, That the Legislative Council, as recomposed by the 
present Governor-in-Chief, must be considered as embodying the senti- 
ments of the Colonial Executive Government, and that from the mo- 
ment it was so recomposed the two authorities seem to have bound and 
leagued themselves together for the purpose of proclaiming principles 
subversive of all harmony in the Province, and of governing and domi- 
neering in a spirit of blind and invidious national antipathy. 

34. Resolved, That the Address voted unanimously on the 1st April 
1833, by the Legislative Council, as recomposed by the present Go- 
vernor-in-Chief, was concurred in by the Honourable the Chief Justice 
of the Province, Jonathan Sewell, to whom the Right Honourable 
Lord Viscount Goderich, in his Dispatch, communicated to the House 
on the 25th November 1831, recommended "a cautious abstinence'* 
from all proceedings by which he might be involved in any contention 
of a party nature; by John Hale, the present Receiver-General, who, 
in violation of the laws, and of the trust reposed in him, and upon il- 
legal warrants issued by the Governor, has paid away large sums of the 
public money, without any regard to the obedience which is always due 
to the law ; by Sir John Caldwell, baronet, the late Receiver-General, 
a peculator, who has been condemned to pay nearly £100,000 to re- 
imburse a like sum levied upon the people of this Province, and granted 
by law to His Majesty, his Heirs and successors, for the public use of 
the Province, and for the support of His Majesty's Government therein, 
and who has diverted the greater part of the said sum for the purposes 
to which it was destined, and appropriated it to his private use ; by 
Mathew Bell, a grantee of the Crown, who has been unduly and 
illegally favoured by the executive, in the lease of the forges of St. 
Maurice, in the grant of large tracts of waste lands, and in the lease of 
large tracts of land formerly belonging to the order of Jesuits ; by 
John Stewart, an executive Councillor, commissioner of the Jesuit's 
estates, and the incumbent of other lucrative offices : all of whom are 
placed by their pecuniary and personal interests, under the influence of 
the Executive; and by the Honourable George MofFatt, Peter M'Gill, 
John Molson, Horatio Gates, Robert Jones, and James Baxter, all of 
whom, as well as those before mentioned, were, with two exceptions, 
born out of the country, and all of whom, except one, who for a num- 
ber of years was a member of the Assembly, and has extensive landed 
property, are but slightly qualified in that respect, and had not been 
sufficiently engaged in public life to afford a presumption that they 
were fit to perform the functions of legislators for life; and by Antoine 
Gaspard Couillard, the only native of the country, of French origin, 
who stooped to concur in the Address, and who also had never been 
engaged in public life, and is but very moderately qualified with 
respect to real property, and who, after his appointment to the Council, 



49 

and before the said 1st of April, rendered himself dependent on the 
Executive by soliciting a paltry and subordinate place of profit. 

35. Resolved, That the said Address, voted by seven Councillors, 
under the influence of the present head of the Executive; and by five 
others of his appointment, (one only of the six others who voted it, the 
Hon. George MofFatt, having been appointed under his predecessor,) 
is the work of the present Administration of this Province, the expres- 
sion of its sentiments, the key to its acts, and the proclamation of the 
iniquitous and arbitrary principles, which are to form its rule of conduct 
for the future. 

36. Resolved, That the said Address is not less injurious to the 
small number of Members of the Legislative Council who are independ- 
ent, and attached to the interests and honour of ihe country, who have 
been Members of the Assembly, and are known as having partaken its 
opinions and seconded its efforts, to obtain for it the entire control and 
disposal of the public revenue; as having approved the wholesome, 
constitutional, and not, as styled by the Council, the daring steps taken 
by this House of praying by address to His Majesty that the Legislative 
Council might be rendered elective j as condemning a scheme for the 
creation of an extensive monopoly of lands in favour of speculators re- 
siding out of the country ; as believing that they could not have been 
appointed to the Council, with a view to increase the constitutional 
weight and efficacy of that body, in which they find themselves opposed 
to a majority hostile to their principles and their country; as believing 
that the interests and wishes of the people are faithfully represented by 
their representatives, and that the connexion between this country and 
the parent state, will be durable in proportion to the direct influence 
exercised by the people in the enactment of laws adapted to insure 
their welfare ; and as being of opinion, that His Majesty's subjects 
recently settled in this country will share in all the advantages of the 
free institutions and of the improvements which would be rapidly de- 
veloped, if, by means of the extension of the elective system, the ad- 
ministration were prevented from creating a monopoly of power and 
profit in favour of the minority who are of one origin, and to the pre- 
judice of the majority who are of another, and from buying, corrupting 
and exciting a portion of this minority in such a manner as to give to 
all discussions of local interest the alarming character of strife and 
national antipathy ; and that the independent Members of the Legisla- 
tive Council, indubitably convinced of the tendency of that body, and 
undeceived as to the motives which led to their appointment as Mem- 
bers of it, now refrain from attending the sittings of the said Council, 
in which they despair of being able to effect any thing for the good of 
the country. 

37. Resolved, That the political world in Europe is at this moment 
agitated by two great parties, who in different countries appear under 
the several names of servile s^ royalists, tories and conservatives on the 
one side, and of liberals, constitutionals, republicans, whigs, reformers, 
radicals and similar appellations on the other ; that the former party 
is, on this continent, without any weight or influence except what it 
deri^ies from its European supporters, and from a irifiiyig number of 



50 

persons who become their dependents for the sake of personal gain, 
and from others^ who from age or habit cling to opinions which are not 
partaken by any numerous class ; while the second party overspreads 
all America. And that the Colonial Secretary is mistaken if he be- 
lieves that the exclusion of a few salaried oncers from the Legislative 
Council could suffice to make it harmonise with the wants, wishes and 
opinions of the people, as long as the Colonial Governors retain the 
power of preserving in it a majority of members rendered servile by 
their antipathy to every liberal idea. 

38. Resolved, That this vicious system, which has been carefully 
maintained, has given to the Legislative Council a grt ater character 
of animosity to tbe country than it had at any former period, and 
is as contrary to the wishes of Parliament, as that which, in 
order to resist the wishes of the people of England for the Parlia- 
mentary Reform, should have called into the House of Lords a number 
of men notorious for their factious and violent opposition to that great 
measure 

39. Resolved, That the Legislative Council, representing merely 
the personal opinions of certain members of a body so strongly accused 
at a recent period by the people of this Province, and so justly cen- 
sured by the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons, is 
not an authority competent to demand alterations in the constitutional 
Act of the 2\ St Geo. 3, c. 'A\, and that the said Act ought not to be 
and cannot be altered, except at such time and in such manner as may 
be wished by the people of this Province, whose sentiments this House 
is alone competent to represent ; that no interference on the part of the 
British Legislature with the laws and constitution of this Province, 
which should not be founded on the ivishes of the people, freely ex- 
pressed either through this House or in any other constitutional man- 
ner, could in anywise tend to settle any of the difficulties which exist 
in this Province, but, on the contrary, would only aggravate them and 
prolong their continuance. 

40. Resolved, That this House expects from the justice of the Par- 
liament of the United Kingdo7n, that no measure of the nature afore- 
said, founded on the false representations of the Legislative Council 
and of the members and tools of the Coloriial Administration, all in- 
terested in perpetuating existing abuses, will be adopted to the preju- 
dice of the rights, liberties and welfare of the people of this Province; 
but that on the contrary, the Imperial Legislature will comply with 
the wishes of the people and of this House, and will provide the most 
effectual remedy for all evils present and future, either by rendering 
the Legislative Council elective in the manner mentioned in the Ad- 
dress of this House to His most gracious Majesty, of the 20th March, 
1833, or by enabling the people to express still more directly their 
opinions as to the measures to be adopted in that behalf, and with 
regard to such other modifications of the constitution as the wants of 
the people and the interest of His Majesty's Government in the Pro- 
vince may require; and that this House perseveres in the said 
Address. 

41. Resolved, That His Majesty's Secretary of State for tbe Colonial 



51 

Department has acknowledged in his Despatches, that it has fre- 
quently been admitted that the people (jf Canada ought to see nothing 
in the mstitutions of the neighbouring States which they could regard 
with envy, and that he has yet to learn that any such feeUng now ex- 
ists among His Majesty's subjects in Canada; to which this House 
answers, that the neighbouring States have a form of government very 
fit to prevent abuses of power, and very effective in repressing them ; 
that the reverse of this order of things has always prevailed in Canada 
under the present form of Government ; that there exists in the neigh- 
bouring States a stronger and more general attachment to the national 
institutions than in any other country, and that there exists also in 
those States a guarantee for the progressive advance of their political 
institutions towards perfection, in the revision of the same at short and 
determinate intervals, by conventions of the people, in order that they 
may without any shock or violence be adapted to the actual stale of 
things. 

42. Resolved, That it was in consequence of a correct idea of the 
state of the country and of society generally in America, that the Com- 
mittee of the House of Commons asked, whether there was not in the 
two Canadas a growing inclination to see the institutions become more 
and more popular, and in that respect, more and more like those of the 
United States; and that John Neilson, esquire, one of the agents sent 
from this country, answered, that the fondness for popular institutions 
had made great progress in the two Canadas ; and that the same agent 
was asked, whether he did not think that it would be wise that the 
object of every change made in the institutions of the Province should 
be to comply more and more with the wishes of the people, and to 
render the said institutions extremely popular : to which question this 
House for and in the name of the people whom it represents, answers, 
solemnly and deliberately, "Yes, it would be wise; it would be ex- 
cellent." 

43. Resolved, That the constitution and form of government which 
would best suit this Colony are not to be sought solely in the analogies 
offered by the institutions of Great Britain, where the state of society 
is altogether different from our own ; and that it would be wise to turn 
to profit by the information to be gained by observing the effects pro- 
duced by the different and infinitely varied constitutions which the 
Kings and Parliament of England have granted to the several Planta- 
tions and Colonies in America, and by studying the way in which vir- 
tuous and enlightened men have modified such Colonial Institutions 
when it could be done with the assent of the parlies interested. 

44. Resolved, That the unanimous consent with which all the Ame- 
rican States have adopted and extended the elective system, shows 
that it is adapted to the wishes, manners and social state of the inha- 
birants of this Continent; that this system prevails equally among 
those of British and those of Spanish origin, although the latter, during 
the continuance of their colonial state had been under the calamitous 
yoke of ignorance and absolutism; and that we do not hesitate to ask 
from a Prince of the House of Brunswick, and a reformed Parliament, 
all the freedom and political powers which the Princes of the House of 



52 

Stuart and their Parliaments granted to the most favoured of the Plan- 
tations formed at a period when such grants must have been less fa- 
vourably regarded than they would now be. 

45. Resolved, That it was not the best and most free systems of 
Colonial Government which tended most to hasten the independence 
of the old English Colonies ; since the Province of New York in which 
the institutions were most monarchical in the sense which that word 
appears to bear in the Despatch of the Colonial Secretary, was the 
first to refuse obedience to an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain ; 
and that the Colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island, which though 
closely and affectionately connected with the Mother Country for a 
long course of years, enjoyed constitutions purely democratic, were 
the last to enter into a confederation rendered necessary by the conduct 
of bad servants of the Crown, who called in the supreme authority of 
the Parliament, and the British Constitution to aid them to govern 
arbitrarily, listening rather to the Governors and their advisers than to 
the people and their Representatives, and shielding with their protec- 
tion those who consumed the taxes rather than those who paid them. 

46. Resolved, That with a view to the introduction of whatever the 
institutions of the neighbouring States offered that was good and ap- 
plicable to the state of the Province, this House had among other mea- 
sures passed, during many years, a Bill founded on the principle of 
proportioning arithmetically the number of Representatives to the 
population of each place represented ; and that if by the pressure of 
circumstances and the urgent necessity which existed that the number 
of Representatives should be increased, it has been compelled to assent 
to amendments which violate that principle, by giving to several coun- 
ties, containing a population of little more than 4,000 souls, the same 
number of Representatives as to several others of which the population 
is five times as great, this disproportion is in the opinion of this House 
an act of injustice, for which it ought to seek a remedy: and that in 
new countries where the population increases rapidly, and tends to 
create new settlements, it is wise and equitable that by a frequent 
and periodical census, such increase and the manner in which it is dis- 
tributed, should be ascertained, principally for the purpose of settling 
the representation of the Province on an equitable basis. 

47. Resolved, That the fidelity of the people and the protection of 
the Government, are co-relative obligations, of which the one cannot 
long subsist without the other ; that by reason of the defects which 
exist in the laws and constitution of this Province, and of the manner 
in which those laws and that constitution have been administered, the 
people of this Province are not sufficiently protected in their lives, their 
property and their honour? and that the long series of acts of injustice 
and oppression, of which they have to complain, have increased with 
alarming rapidity in violence and in number under the present ad- 
ministration.- 

48. Resolved, That in the midst of these disorders and sufferings, 
this House and the people whom it represents, had always cherished 
the hope and expressed their faith that His Majesty's Government in 
England did not knowingly and wilfully participate in the politicaJ 



53 

immorality of its colonial agents and officers; and that it is with 
astonishment and grief that they have seen in the extract from the 
Despatches of the Colonial Secretary, communicated to this House by 
the Governor-in-Chief during the present Session, that one at least of 
the Members of His Majesty's Government entertains towards them 
feelings of prejudice and animosity, and inclines to favour plans of 
oppression and revenge, ill adapted to change a system of abuses, the 
continuance of which would altogether discourage the people, extin- 
guish in them the legitimate hope of happiness which, as British sub- 
jects, they entertained, and would leave them only the hard alternative 
of submitting to an ignominious bondage, or of seeing those ties en- 
dangered which unite them to the Mother Country. 

49. Resolved, That this House and the people whom it represents 
do not wish or intend to convey any threat ; but that, relying as they 
do upon the principles of law and justice, they are and ought to be 
politically strong enough not to be exposed to receive insult from any 
man whomsoever, or bound to suffer it in silence ; that the style of the 
said Extracts from the Despatches of the Colonial Secretary, as com- 
municated to this House, is insulting and inconsiderate to such a 
degree that no legally constituted body, although its functions were 
infinitely subordinate to those of legislation, could or ought to tolerate 
them ; that no similar example can be found even in the Despatches 
of those of his predecessors in office least favourable to the rights of the 
ColoPxies; that the tenor of the said Despatches is incompatible with 
t^ie rights and privileges of this House, which ought not to be called in 
question or defined by the Colonial Secretary, but which, as occasion 
may require, will be successively promulgated and enforced by this 
House. 

50. Resolved, That with regard to the following expressions in one 
©f the said Despatches, '" should events unhappily force upon Parliament 
the exercise of its supreme authority to compose the internal dissension 
of the Colonies, it would be my object and my duty, as a servant of the 
Crown, to submit to Parliament such modifications of the Charter of 
the Canadas as should tend, not to the introduction of institutions con- 
sistent with monarchical government, but to maintaining and strength- 
ening the connection with the Mother Country, by a close adherence to 
the spirit of the British constitution, and by preserving in their proper 
place and within their due limits the mutual rights and privileges of ali 
classes of His Majesty's subjects ;" — if they are to be understood as 
containing a threat to introduce into the constitution any other modi- 
fications than such as are asked for by the majority of the people of 
this Province, whose sentiments cannot be legitimately expressed by 
any other authority than its Representatives, this House would esteem 
itself wanting in candour to the people of England, if it hesitated to 
call their attention to the fact, that in less than twenty years the popu- 
lation of the United States of America will be as great or greater than 
that of Great Britain, and that of British America will be as great or 
greater than that of the former English Colonies was when the latter 
deemed that the time was come to decide that the inappreciable ad- 
vantage of governing themselves instead of being governed, ought to 

£ 



^4 

engage them to repudiate a system of Colonial Government which 
was, generally speaking, much better than that of British America 
now is. 

51. Resolved, That the approbation expressed by the Colonial Se- 
cretary in his said Despatch of the present composition of the Legis- 
lative Council, whose acts since its pretended reform have been marked 
by party spirit and by invidious national distinctions and preferences, is 
a subject of just alarm to His Majesty's Canadian subjects in general, 
and more particularly to the great majority of them, who have not 
yielded at any time to any other class of the inhabitants of this Pro- 
vince in their attachment to His Majesty's Government, in their love of 
peace and order, in respect for the laws, and in their wish to effect that 
union among the whole people which is so much to be desired, to the 
end that all may enjoy freely and equally the rights and advantages of 
British subjects, and of the institutions which have been guaranteed to 
and are dear to the country ; that the distinctions and preferences 
aforesaid have almost constantly been used and taken advantage of by 
the Colonial Administration of this Province, and the majority of the 
Legislative Councillors, Executive Councillors, Judges, and other func- 
tionaries dependant upon it ; and that nothing but the spirit of the 
union among the several classes of the people, and their conviction that 
their interests are the same, could have prevented coUisions incompa- 
tible with the prosperity and safety of the Province. 

52. Resolved, That since a circumstance, which did not depend 
upon the choice of the majority of the people, their French origin and 
their use of the French language, has been made by the colonial autho- 
rities a pretext for abuse, for exclusion, for political inferiority, for a 
separation of rights and interests ; this House now appeals to the 
justice of His Majesty's Government and of Parliament, and to the 
honour of the people of England ; that the majority of the inhabitants 
of this country are in nowise disposed to repudiate any one of the ad- 
vantages they derive from their origin and from their descent from the 
French nation, which, with regard to the progress of which it has been 
the cause in civilization, in the sciences, in letters, and in the arts, has 
never been behind the British nation, and is now the worthy rival of the 
latter in the advancement of the cause of liberty and of the science of 
Government ; from which this country derives the greater portion of its 
civil and ecclesiastical law, and of its scholastic and charitable institu- 
tions, and of the religion, language, habits, manners and customs of the 
great majority of its inhabitants. 

53. Resolved, That our fellow-subjects of British origin, in this 
Province, came to settle themselves in a country, ** the inhabitants 
whereof, professing the religion of the Church of Rome, enjoyed an 
established form of constitution and system of laws, by which their per- 
sons and their property had been protected, governed and ordered, 
during a long series of years, from the first establishment of the Pro- 
vince of Canada ;" that, prompted by these considerations and guided 
by the rules of justice and of the law of nations, the British Parliament 
enacted that, " in all matters of controversy, relative to property and 
civil rights, resort should be had to the laws of Canada ;" that when 



55 

Parliament afterwards departed from the principle thus recognised, 
firstly, by the introduction of the English criminal law, and afterwards 
by that of the representative system, with all the constitution and par- 
liamentary law necessary to its perfect action, it did so in conformity to 
the sufficiently expressed wish of the Canadian people ; and that every 
attempt on the part of public functionaries or of other persons (who 
on coming to settle in the Province, made their condition their 
own voluntary act) against the existence of any portion of the laws and 
institutions peculiar to the country, and any preponderance given to 
such persons in the Legislative and Executive Councils, in the courts 
of law, or in other departments, are contrary to the engagements of the 
British Parliament, and to the rights guaranteed to His Majesty's 
Canadian subjects, on the faith of the national honour of England and 
on that of capitulations and treaties. 

54. Resolved, That any combination, whether effected by means of 
Acts of the British Parliament, obtained in contravention to its formep 
engagements, or by means of the partial and corrupt administration of 
the present constitution and system of law, would be a violation of 
those rights, and would, as long as it should exist, be obeyed by the 
people, from motives of fear and constraint, and not from choice and 
affection ; that the conduct of the Colonial Administrations and of their 
agents and instruments in this colony, has for the most part been of a 
nature unjustly to create apprehensions as to the views of the people 
and government of the mother country, and to endanger the confidence 
and content of the inhabitants of this Province, which can only be. se- 
cured by equal laws, and by the observance of equal justice, as the 
rule of conduct in all the departments of the government. 

55. Resolved, That whether the number of that class of His Ma- 
jesty's subjects in this Province, who are of British origin, be that men- 
tioned in the said address of the Legislative Council, or whether (as 
the truth is) it amounts to less than half that number, the wishes and 
interests of the great majority of them are common to them and to their 
fellow-subjects of French origin, and speaking the French language; 
that the one class love the country of their birth, the other that of their 
adoption ; that the greater portion of the latter have acknowledged the 
generally beneficial tendency of the laws and institutions of the country, 
and have laboured in concert with the former to introduce into them 
gradually, and by the authority of the Provincial Parliament, the im- 
provements of which they have, from time to time, appeared susceptible, 
and have resisted the confusion which it has been endeavoured to intro- 
duce into them in favour of schemes of monopoly and abuse, and that 
all without distinction wish anxiously for an impartial and protecting 
Government. 

56. Resolved, That in addition to administrative and judicial abuses 
which have had an injurious effect upon the public welfare and con- 
fidence, attempts have been made, from time to time, to induce the 
Parliament of the United Kingdom, by deceiving its justice and abus- 
ing its benevolent intentions, to adopt measures calculated to bring 
about combinations of the nature above-mentioned, and to pass 
Acts of internal Legislation for his Province, having the same ten- 

E 2 



56 

dency,and with reg^ard to which the people of the country had not been 
consulted ; that unhappily the attempts to obtain the passing of some 
of these measures were successful, especially that of the Act of the 
6 Geo. 4, c. 59, commonly called the " Tenures Act," the repeal of 
which was unanimously demanded by all classes of the people, without 
distinction, through their representatives, a very shorttime after the num- 
ber of the latter was increased ; and that this House has not yet been 
able to obtain from His Majesty's Representative in this Province, or 
from any other source, any information as to the views of His Majesty's 
Government in England with regard to the repeal of the said Act. 

57. Resolved, That the object of the said Act was, according to the 
benevolent intentions of Parliament, and as the title of the Act sets 
forth, the extinction of feudal and seigniorial rights and dues on lands 
held enjiefdixxdi d cens in this Province, with the intention of favouring 
the great body of the inhabitants of the country, and protecting them 
against the said dues which were regarded as burdensome; but that 
the provisions of the said Act, far from having the effect aforesaid, 
afford facilities to seigniors to become, in opposition to the interests of 
their censitaireSy the absolute proprietors of the extensive tracts of un- 
conceded lands which by the law of the country they held only for the 
benefit of the inhabitants thereof, to whom they were bound to concede 
them in consideration of certain limited dues ; that the said Act, if 
generally acted upon, would shut out the mass of the permanent inha- 
bitants of the country from the vacant lands in the seigniories, while 
at the same time they have been constantly prevented from settling on 
the waste lands of the Crown on easy and liberal terms, and under a 
tenure adapted to the laws of the country, by the partial, secret, and 
vicious manner in which the Crown Land department has been ma- 
naged, and the provisions of the Act aforesaid, with regard to the laws 
applicable to the lands in question ; and that the application made by 
certain seigniors for a change of tenure, under the authority of the said 
Act, appear to prove the correctness of the view this House has taken 
of its practical effect. 

58. Resolved, That it was only in consequence of an erroneous sup- 
position that feudal charges were inherent in the law of this country, as 
far as the possession and transmission of real property and the tenures 
recognized by that law were concerned, that it was enacted in the said 
Act that the lands with regard to which a change of tenure should be 
effected, should thereafter be held under the tenure of free and common 
soccage ; that the seigniorial charges have been found burdensome in 
certain cases, chiefly by reason of the want of adequate means of ob- 
taining the interference of the Colonial Government and of the courts 
of law, to enforce the ancient law of the country in that behalf, and 
that the Provincial Legislature was, moreover, fully competent to pass 
laws providing for the redemption of the said charges in a manner which 
should be in accordance with the interests of all parties, and for the 
introduction of the free tenures recognized by the laws of the country : 
that the House of Asf^embly has been repeatedly occupied, and now is 
occupied about this important subject ; but that the said Tenures Act, 
insufficient of itself to effect equitably the purpose for which it was 



57 

passed, is of a nature to embarrass and create obstacles to the effectual 
measures which the Legislature of the country, with a full knowledge 
of the subject, might be disposed to adopt; and that the application 
thus made (to the exclusion of the Provincial Legislature) to the 
Parliament of the United Kingdom, which was far less competent to 
make equitable enactments on a subject so complicated in its nature, 
could only have been made with a view to unlawful speculations and 
the subversion of the laws of the country. 

59. Resolved, That independently of its many other serious imper- 
fections, the said Act does not appear to have been founded on a suf- 
ficient knowledge of the laws which govern persons and property in this 
country, when it declares the laws of Great Britain to be applicable to 
certain incidents to real property therein enumerated ; and that it has 
only served to augment the confusion and doubt which had prevailed 
in the courts of law, and in private transactions with regard to the 
law which applied to lands previously granted in free and common 
soccaije. 

60. Resolved, That the provision of the said Act which has excited 
the greatest alarm, and which is most at variance with the rights of the 
people of the country, and with those of the Provincial Parliament, is 
that which enacts that lands previously held enjief or encensine shall, 
after a change of tenure shall have been effected with regard to them, 
be held in free and common soccage, and thereby become subject to 
the laws of Great Britain, under the several circumstances therein men- 
tioned and enumerated; that besides being insufficient in itself, this 
provision is of a nature to bring into collision, in the old settlements, 
at multiplied points of contiguity, two opposite systems of laws, one of 
which is entirely unknown to this country, in which it is impossible to 
carry it into effect; that from the feeling manifested by the colonial 
authorities and their partisans towards the inhabitants of the country, 
the latter have just reason to fear that the enactment in question is only 
the prelude to the final subversion, by Acts of Parliament of Great 
Britain, fraudulently obtained in violation of its former engagements, of 
the system of laws by which the persons and property of the people of 
this Province were so long happily governed. 

61. Resolved, That the inhabitants of this country have just reason 
to fear that the claims made to the property of the seminary of St. 
Sulpice, at Montreal, are attributable to the desire of the colonial ad- 
ministration, and its agents and tools, to hasten this deplorable state of 
things ; and that His Majesty's Government in England would, by re- 
assuring His faithful subjects on this point, dissipate the alarm felt by 
the clergy, and by the whole people without distinction, and merit 
their sincere gratitude. 

62. Resolved, That it is the duty of this House to persist in asking 
for the absolute repeal of the said Tenures Act ^ and until such repeal 
shall be effected, to propose to the other branches of the Provincial 
Parliament such measures as may be adapted to weaken the perni- 
cious effects of the said Act. 

63. Resolved, That this House has learned with regret, from one of 
the said despatches of the Colonial Secretary, that His Majesty has 



58 

been advised to interfere in a niatter which concerns the privileges of 
this House ; that in the case there alluded to, this House exercised a 
privilege solemnly established by the House of Commons, before the 
principle on which it rests became the law of the land ; that this pri- 
vilege is essential to the independence of this House, and to the freedom 
of its votes and proceedings ; that the resolutions passed by this House, 
on the 15th of February, 1831, are constitutional and well-founded, 
and are supported by the example of the Commons of Great Britain; 
that this House has repeatedly passed bills for giving effect to the said 
principle, but that these bills failed to become law, at first from the 
obstacles opposed to them in another branch of the Provincial Legisla- 
ture, and subsequently by reason of the reservation of the last of the 
said bills for the signification of His Majesty's pleasure in England, 
whence it has not yet been sent back ; that until some bill to the same 
effect shall become law, this House persists in the said resolutions ; 
and that the refusal of his Excellency, the present Governor-in-Chief, 
to sign a writ for the election of a knight representative for the county 
of Montreal, in the place of Dominique Mondelet, Esq., whose seat had 
been declared vacant, is a grievance of which this House is entitled to 
obtain the redress, and one which would alone have sufficed to put an 
end to all intercourse between it and the Colonial Executive, if the 
circumstances of the country had not offered an infinite number of 
other abuses and grievances against which it is urgently necessary to 
remonstrate. 

64. Resolved, That the claims which have for many years been set 
up by the Executive Government to that control over and power of 
appropriating a great portion of the revenues levied in this Province, 
which belong of right to this House, are contrary to the rights and to 
the constitution of the country ; and that with regard to the said 
claims, this House persists in the declarations it has heretofore made. 

65. Resolved, That the said claims of the Executive have been 
vague and varying ; that the documents relative to the said claims, 
and the accounts and estimates of expenses laid before this House, 
have likewise been varying and irregular, and insufficient to enable this 
House to proceed with a full understanding of the subject on the 
matters to which they related ; that important heads of the public 
revenue of the Province, collected either under the provisions of the 
law or under arbitrary regulations, made by the Executive, have been 
omitted in the said accounts ; that numerous items have been paid out 
of the public revenue without the authority of this House, or any 
acknowledgment of its control over them, as salaries for sinecure 
offices, which are not recognized by this House, and even for other 
objects for which, after mature deliberation, it had not deemed it expe- 
dient to appropriate any portion of the public Revenue; and that no 
accounts of the sums so expended have iDeen laid before this House. 

66. Resolved, That the Executive Government has endeavoured by 
means of the arbitrary regulations aforesaid, and particularly by the 
sale of the ivaste lands of the Crown, and of the timber on the same, 
to create for itself out of the Revenue which this House only has the 
right of appropriating, resources independent of the control of the 



59 

representatives of the people ; and that the result has been a diminu- 
tion of the wholesome influence which the peojole have constitutionally 
the right of exercising over the administrative branch of the Govern- 
ment, and over the spirit and tendency of its measures. 

67. Resolved, That this House having, from time to time, with a 
view to proceed by bill, to restore regularity to the financial system of 
the Province, and to provide for the expenses of the administration of 
justice and of His Majesty's Civil Government therein, asked the Pro- 
vincial Government by address for divers documents and accounts re- 
lating to financial matters, and to abuses connected with them, has 
met with repeated refusals, more especially during the present session 
and the preceding one ; that divers subordinate public functionaries, 
summoned to appear before committees of this House to give informa- 
tion on the said subject, have refused to do so in pursuance of the said 
claim set up by the Provincial Administrations to withdraw a large por- 
tion of the public income and expenditure from the control and even 
from the knowledge of this House; that during the present session one 
of the said subordinate functionaries of the Executive being called 
upon to produce the originals of sundry registers of warrants and re- 
ports, which it was important to this House to cause to be examined, 
insisted on being present at the deliberations of the committee ap- 
pointed by the House for that purpose ; and that the head of the ad- 
ministration being informed of the fact, refrained from interfering, 
although in conformity to Parhamentary usage, this House had pledged 
itself that the said documents should be returned, and although the 
Governor-in-Chief had himself promised communication of them. 

68. Resolved, That the result of the secret and unlawful distri- 
bution of a large portion of the public revenue of the Province has 
been, that the Executive Government has always, except with regard to 
appropriations for objects of a local nature, considered itself bound to 
account for the public money to the Lords Commissioners of the 
Treasury in England, and not to this House, nor according to its votes, 
or even in conformity to the laws passed by the Provincial Legislature ; 
and that the accounts and statements laid before this House from time 
to time have never assumed the shape of a regular system of balanced 
accounts, but have been drawn up, one after another, with such altera- 
tions and irregularities as it pleased the Administration of the day to 
introduce into them, from the accounts kept with the Lords of the 
Treasury, in which the whole public money received was included, as 
well as all the items of expenditure, whether authorized or unauthorized 
by the Provincial Legislature. 

69. Resolved, That the pretensions and abuses aforesaid have taken 
away from this House even the shadow of control over the public 
revenue of the Province, and have rendered it impossible for it to ascer- 
tain at any time the amount of revenue collected, the disposable amount 
of the same, and the sums required for the public service ; and that 
the House having during many years passed Bills, of which the models 
are to be found in the Statute-book of Great Britain, to establish a 
regular system of accountability and responsibility in the department 
connected with the receipt and expenditure of the revenue ; these Bills 
have failed in the Legislative Council. 



60 

70. Resolved, That since the last session of ihe Provincial Parlia- 
ment, the Governor-in-Chief of this Province, and the members of his 
Executive Government, relying on the pretensions above-mentioned, 
have, without any lawful authority, paid large sums out of the public 
revenue, subject to the control of this House; and that the said sums 
were divided according to their pleasure, and even in contradiction to 
the votes of this House, as incorporated in the Supply Bill passed by it 
during the last session, and rejected by the Legislative Council. 

71. Resolved, That this House will hold responsible for all monies 
which have been, or may hereafter be paid, otherwise than under the 
authority of an Act of the Legislature, or upon an Address of this 
House, out of the public revenue of the Province, all those who may 
have authorized such payments, or participated therein, until the said 
sums shall have been reimbursed, or a bill or bills of indemnity freely 
passed by this House shall have become law. 

72. Resolved, That the course adopted by this House in the Supply 
Bill, passed during the last session, of attaching certain conditions to 
certain votes, for the purpose of preventing the accumulation of incom- 
patible offices in the same persons, and of obtaining the redress of cer- 
tain abuses and grievances, is wise and constitutional, and has fre- 
quently been adopted by the House of Commons, under analogous 
circumstances ; and that if the Commons of England do not now so 
frequently recur to it, it is because they have happily obtained the 
entire control of the revenue of the nation, and because the respect 
shewn to their opinions with regard to the redress of grievances and 
abuses, by the other constituted authorities, has regulated tlte working 
of the constitution in a manner equally adapted to give stability to His 
Majesty's Government, and to protect the interests of the people. 

73. Resolved, That it was anciently the practice of the House of 
Commons to withhold supplies until grievances were redressed ; and 
that in following this course in the present conjuncture, we are war- 
ranted in our proceeding, as well by the most approved precedents, as 
by the spirit of the constitution itself. 

74. Resolved, That if hereafter, when the redress of all grievances 
and abuses^ shall have been effected, this House should deem it fit and 
expedient to grant supplies, it ought not to do so otherwise than in the 
manner mentioned in its fifth and sixth Resolutions of the Ifith March, 
1833, and by appropriating by its votes in an especial manner, and in 
the order in which they are enumerated in the said resolutions, the full 
amount of those heads of revenue, to the right of appropriating which 
claims have been set up by the Executive Government. 

75. Resolved, That the number of the inhabitants of the country 
being about 600,000, those of French origin are about 525,000, and 
those of British or other origin 75,000 ; and that the establishment 
of the Civil Government of Lower Canada for the year 1832, accord- 
ing to the Yearly Returns made by the Provincial Administration, for 
the information of the British Parliament, contained the names of 157 
officers and others receiving salaries, who are apparently of British 
or foreign origin, and the names of 47 who are apparently natives of the 
country, of French origin : that this statement does not exhibit the 



61 

whole disproportion which exists in the distribution of the public 
money and power, the latter class being for the most part appointed to 
the inferior and less lucrative offices, and most frequently only obtain- 
ing even these by becoming the dependents of those who hold the 
higher and more lucrative offices ; that the accumulation of many of 
the best paid and most influential, and at the same time incompatible 
offices, in the same person, which is forbidden by the laws and by 
sound policy, exists especially for the benefit of the former class ; and 
that two-thirds of the persons included in the last commission of the 
peace issued in the Province are apparently of British or foreign origin, 
and one-third only of French origin. 

76. Resolved, That this partial and abusive practice of bestowing 
the great majority of official places in the Province on these only who 
are least connected with its permanent interests, and with the mass of 
its inhabitants, had been most especially remarkable in the judicial de- 
partment, the judges for the three great districts having, with the ex- 
ception of one only in each, been systematically chosen from that class 
of persons, who, being born out of the country, are the least versed in 
its laws, and in the language and usages of the majority of its inhabi- 
tants ; that the result of their intermeddling in the politics of the 
country, of their connection with the Members of the Colonial Ad- 
ministration, and of their prejudices in favour of institutions foreign to 
and at variance with those of the country, is that the majority of the 
said judges have introduced great irregularity into the general system 
of our jurisprudence, by neglecting to ground their decisions on its re- 
cognised principles ; and that the claim laid by the said judges to the 
power of regulating the forms of legal proceedings in a manner con- 
trary to the laws, and without the interference of the Legislature, has 
frequently been extended to the fundamental rules of the law and of 
practice ; and that in consequence of the same system, the adminis- 
tration of the criminal law is partial and uncertain, and such as to 
afford but little protection to the subject, and has failed to inspire that 
confidence which ought to be its inseparable companion. 

77. Resolved, That in consequence of their connection with the 
members of the Provincial Administrations, and of their antipathy to 
the country, some of the said judges have, in violation of the laws, at- 
tempted to abolish the use in the courts of law of the language spoken 
by the majority of the inhabitants of the country, which is necessary 
to the free action of the laws, and forms a portion of the usages gua- 
ranteed to them in the most solemn manner by the law of nations and 
by the statutes of the British Parliament. 

78. Resolved, That some of the said judges, through partiality for 
political purposes, and in violation of the criminal law of England as 
established in this country, of their duty, and their oath, have con- 
nived with divers law officers of the Crown, acting in the interest of the 
Provincial Administration, to allow the latter to engross and mono- 
polize all criminal prosecutions of what nature soever, without allow- 
ing the private prosecutor to intervene or be heard, or any advocate to 
express his opinion amktis curice, when the Crown officers opposed it; 



62 

that in consequence of this, numerous prosecutions of a political na- 
ture have been brought into the courts of law by the Crown officers 
against those whose opinions were unfavourable to the Administration 
for the time being ; while it was impossible for the very numerous 
class of His Majesty's subjects to which the latter belonged to com- 
mence with the slightest confidence any prosecution against those who, 
being protected by the Administration, and having countenanced its 
acts of violence, had been guilty of crimes or misdemeanours ; that 
the tribunals aforesaid have, as far as the persons composing them are 
concerned, undergone no modification whatever, and inspire the same 
fears for the future. 

79. Resolved, That this House, as representing the people of this 
Province, possesses of right, and has exercised within this Province 
when occasion has required it, all the powers, privileges and immuni- 
ties claimed and possessed by the Commons House of Parliament in 
the kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. 

80. Resolved, That it is one of the undoubted privileges of this 
House to send for all persons, papers, and records, and to command the 
attendance of all persons, civil or military, resident within the Pro- 
vince, as witnesses in all investigations which this House may deem it 
expedient to institute ; and to require such witnesses to produce all 
papers and records in their keeping, whenever it shall deem it condu- 
cive to the public good to do so. 

81. Resolved, That as at the grand inquest of the Province, it is the 
duty of this House to inquire concerning all grievances, and all cir- 
cumstances which may endanger the general welfare of the inhabitants 
of the Province, or be of a nature to excite alarm in them with regard 
to their lives, their liberty, and their property, to the end that such re- 
presentations may be made to our Most Gracious Sovereign, or such 
legislative measures introduced, as may lead to the redress of such 
grievances, or tend to allay such alarm; and that far from having a 
right to impede the exercise of these rights and privileges, the Gover- 
nor-in-Chief is deputed by his Sovereign, is invested with great 
powers, and receives a laige salary, as much for defending the rights 
of the subject and facilitating the exercise of the privileges of this 
House, and of all constituted bodies, as for maintaining the preroga- 
lives of the Crown. 

82. Resolved, That since the commencement of the present session, 
a great number of petitions relating to the infinite variety of objects 
connected with the public welfare, have been presented to this House, 
and many messages and important communications received by it, both 
from His Majesty's Government in England and from His Majesty's 
Provincial Government; that many bills have been introduced in this 
House, and many important inquiries ordered by it, in several of which 
the Governor in-Chief is personally and deeply implicated ; that the 
said petitions from our constituents, the people of all parts of this 
Province ; the said communications from His Majesty's Government 
in England and from the Provincial Government ; the said bills already 
introduced or in preparation ; the said inquiries commenced and in- 
tended to be diligently prosecuted, may and must necessitate the pre- 



63 

sence of numerous witnesses, the production of numerous papers, the 
employment of numerous clerks, messengers and assistants, and much 
printing, and lead to inevitable and daily disbursements, forming the 
contingent expenses of this House. 

83. Resolved, That from the year 1792 to the present, advances 
had constantly been made to meet these expenses, on addresses similar 
to that presented this year by this House to the Governor-in-Chief, 
according to the practice adopted by the House of Commons ; that an 
address of this kind is the most solemn vote of credit which this House 
can pass, and that almost the whole amount of the sum exceeding 
<£27 7,000 has been advanced on such votes by the predecessors of his 
Excellency the Governor-in-Chief, and by himself (as he acknowledges 
by his message on the 18th January 1834), without any risk having 
ever been incurred by any other Governor on account of any such ad- 
vance, although several of them have had differences, attended by vio- 
lence and injustice on their part, with the House of Assembly, and 
without their apprehending that the then next Parliament would not 
be disposed to make good the engagements of the House of Assembly 
for the time being; and that this refusal of the Governor-in-Chief, in 
the present instance, essentially impedes the despatch of the business 
for which the Parliament was called together, is derogatory to the 
rights and honour of this House, and forms another grievance for 
which the present administration of this Province is responsible. 

84. Resolved, That besides the grievances and abuses before men- 
tioned, there exist in this Province a great number of others (a part of 
which existed before the commencement of the present administration, 
which has maintained them, and is the author of a portion of them), 
with regard to which this House reserves to itself the right of com- 
plaining and demanding reparation, and the number of which is too 
great to allow of there being enumerated here: that this House points 
out, as among that number, 

Istly. The vicious composition and the irresponsibility of the Executive 
Council, the members of which are at the same time judges of the Court 
of Appeals, and the secrecy with which not only the functions, but even 
the names of the members of that body have been kept from the know- 
ledge of this House, when inquiries have been instituted by it on the 
subject. 

2ndly. The exorbitant fees illegally exacted in certain of the public 
offices, and in others connected with the judicial department, under regu- 
lations made by the Executive Council, by the judges, and by other func- 
tionaries usurping the powers of the legislature. 

3rdly. The practice of illegally calling upon the judges to give their 
opinions secretly on questions which may be afterwards publicly and con- 
tradictorily argued before them ; and the opinions themselves so given by 
the said judges, as political partizans, in opposition to the laws, but in 
favour of the administration for the time being. 

4thly. The cumulation of public places and offices in the same persons, 
and the efforts made by a number of families connected with the adminis- 
tration to perpetuate this state of things for their own advantage, and for 
the sake of domineering for ever, with interested view^s and in the spirit of 
party, over the people and their representatives. 

5thly. The intermeddling of members of the Legislative Councils in the 
elections of the representatives of the people, for the purpose of influenc- 



64 

ing and controlling them by force, and the selection frequently made of 
returning officers for the purpose of securing the same partial and corrupt 
ends; the interference of the present Governor-in-Chief himself in the 
said elections ; his approval of the intermeddling of the said legislative 
councillors in the said elections ; the partiality vt-ith w^hich he intervened 
in the judicial proceedings connected with the said elections, for the pur- 
pose of influencing the said proceeding, in a manner favourable to the 
military power and contrary to the independence of the judicial power ; 
and the applause which, as commander of the forces, he bestowed upon 
the sanguinary execution of the citizens by the soldiery. 

6thly. The interference of the armed military force at such elections, 
through which three peaceable citizens, whose exertions were necessary 
to the support of their families, and who were strangers to the agitation of 
the election, were shot dead in the streets ; the applause bestowed by the 
Governor-in-Chief and Commander of the Forces on the authors of this 
sanguinary military execution (who had not been acquitted by a petty 
jury), for the firmness and discipline displayed by them on that oc- 
casion. 

7thly. The various faulty and partial systems which have been followed 
ever since the passing of the Constitutional Act, with regard to the ma- 
nagement of the waste lands in this Province, and have rendered it impos- 
sible for the great majority of the people of the country to settle on the 
said lands ; the fraudulent and illegal manner in which, contrary to His 
Majesty's instructions. Governors, Legislative and Executive Councillors, 
Judges, and subordinate officers have appropriated to themselves large 
tracts of the said lands ; the monopoly of an extensive portion of the said 
lands in the hands of speculators residing in England, with which the Pro- 
vince is now threatened ; and the alarm generally felt therein with regard 
to the alleged participation of His Majesty's Government in this scheme, 
without its having deigned to re-assure his faithful subjects on this head, 
or to reply to the humble address to His Majesty adopted by this House 
during the last session. 

8thly. The increase of the expenses of the Government without the au- 
thority of the Legislature, and the disproportion of the salaries paid to 
public functionaries to the services performed by them, to the rent of real 
property, and to the ordinary income commanded by the exertions of 
persons possessing talent, industry, and economy, equal to or greater 
than those of the said functionaries. 

9thly. The want of all recourse in the Courts of Law on the part of 
those who have just and legal claims on the Government. 

lOthly. The too frequent reservation of Bills for the signification of His 
Majesty's pleasure, and the neglect of the Colonial Office to consider such 
Bills, a great number of which have never been sent back to the Province, 
and some of which have even been returned so late that doubts may be 
entertained as to the validity of the sanction given to them ; a circumstance 
which has introduced irregularity and uncertainty into the Legislation of 
the Province, and is felt by this House as an impediment to the re-intro- 
duction of the Bills reserved during the then preceding session. 

llthly. The neglect on the part of the Colonial Office to give any answer 
to certain Addresses transmitted by this House on important subjects ; the 
practice followed by the Administration of communicating in an incom- 
plete manner, and by extracts, and frequently v/ithout giving their dates, 
the despatches received from time to time on subjects which have engaged 
the attention of this House ; and the too frequent references to the opinion 
of His Majesty's Ministers in England, on the part of the Provincial Ad- 
ministration, upon points which it is in their power and within their pro* 
vince to decide. 

12thly. The unjust retention of the College at Quebec, which forms 



65 . 

part of the estates of the late Order of Jesuits, and which from a college 
has been transformed into a barrack for soldiers ; the renewal of the lease 
of a considerable portion of the same estates, by the Provincial Executive, 
in favour of a Member of the Legislative Council, since those estates were 
returned to the Legislature, and in opposition to the prayer of this House, 
and to the known wishes of a great number of His Majesty's subjects to 
obtain lands there and to settle on them ; and the refusal of the said Exe- 
cutive to communicate the said lease, and other information on the sub- 
ject, to this House. 

13thly. The obstacles unjustly opposed by the executive, friendly to 
abuses and to ignorance, to the establishment of colleges endowed by vir- 
tuous and disinterested men, for the purpose of meeting the growing- 
desire of the people for the careful education of their children. 

14thly. The refusal of justice with regard to the accusations brought 
by this House, in the name of the people, against judges for flagrant acts 
of malversation, and for ignorance and violation of the law. 

15thly. The refusals on the part of the Governors, and more especially 
of the present Governor-in-Chief, to communicate to this House the 
information asked for by it from time to time, and which it had a right 
to obtain, on a great number of subjects connected with the public business 
of the Province. 

lethly. The refusal of His Majesty's Government to reimburse to the 
Province the amount for which the late Receiver-General was a defaulter, 
and its neglect to enforce the recourse which the Province was entitled to 
against the property and person of the late Receiver-General. 

85. Resolved, That the facts mentioned in the foregoing resolutions, 
demonstrate that the laws and constitutions of the Province have not, 
at any period, been administered in a manner more contrary to the 
interests of His Majesty's Government, and to the rights of the people 
of this Province, than under the present administration, and render it 
necessary that his Excellency Matthew Lord Aylmer, of Balrath, the 
present Governor-in-Chief of this Province, be formally accused by this 
House, of having, while acting as Governor, in contradiction to the 
wishes of the Imperial Parliament, and to the instructions he may have 
received, and against the honour and dignity of the Crown, and the 
rights and privileges of this House and the people ^hom it represents, 
so recomposed the Legislative Council as to augment the dissensions 
which rend this colony ; of having seriously impeded the labours of 
this House, acting as the grand inquest of the country ; of having dis- 
posed of the Public Revenue of the Province, against the consent of 
the Representatives of the people, and in violation of the law and con- 
stitution ; of having maintained existing abuses, and created new ones ; 
of having refused to sign a writ for the election of a Representative to 
fill a vacancy which had happened in this House, and to complete 
the number of representatives established by law for this Province ; and 
that this House expects from the honour, patriotism and justice of the 
reformed Parliament of the United Kingdom, that the Commons of 
the said Parliament will bring impeachments, and will support such 
impeachments before the House of Lords against the said Matthew 
Lord Aylmer, for his illegal, unjust and unconstitutional administration 
of the government of this Province ; and against such of the wicked 
and perverse advisers who have misled him, as this House may 
hereafter accuse, if there be no means of obtaining justice against them 



66 

in the Province, or at the hands His Majesty's Executive Government 
in England. 

86. Resolved, That this House hopes and believes, that the inde- 
pendent members of both Houses of the Parliament of the United 
Kingdom will be disposed, both from inclination and a sense of duty, 
to support the accusations brought by this House, to watch over the 
preservation of its rights and privileges which have been so frequently 
and violently attacked, more especially by the present administration ; 
and so to act, that the people of this Province may not be forced by 
oppression to regret their dependence on the British Empire, and to 
seek elsewhere a remedy for their affliction. 

87. Resolved, That this House learned, with gratitude, that Daniel 
O'Connell, Esq. had given notice in the House of Commons in July last, 
that during the present Session of the Imperial Parliament, he would 
call its attention to the necessity of reforming the Legislative and 
Executive Councils in the two Canadas ; and that the interest thus 
shown for our own fate by him whom the gratitude and blessings of 
his countrymen have, with the applause of the whole civilized world, 
proclaimed Great and Liberator, and of whom our fellow-countrymen 
entertain corresponding sentiments, keeps alive in us the hope that 
through the goodness of our cause and the services of such a friend, 
the British Parliament will not permit a minister, deceived by the in- 
terested representations of the provincial administration and its crea- 
tures and tools, to exert (as there is reason from his despatches to 
apprehend that he may attempt to do,) the highest degree of oppres- 
sion, in favour of a system which in better times he characterized as 
faulty, and against subjects of His Majesty who are apparently only 
known to him by the great patience with which they have waited in 
vain for promised reforms. 

88. Resolved, That this House has the same confidence in Joseph 
Hume, Esq., and feels the same gratitude for the anxiety which he has 
repeatedly shewn for the good government of these colonies, and the 
amelioration of their laws and constitutions, and calls upon the said 
Daniel O'Connell and Joseph Hume, Esqrs., whose constant devoted- 
ness was, even under a Tory ministry, and before the reform of Parlia- 
ment, partially successful in the emancipation of Ireland, from the 
same bondage and the same political inferiority with which the com- 
munications received from the Colonial Secretary during the present 
session menace the people of Lower Canada, to use their efforts that 
the laws and constitution of this Province may be amended in the man- 
ner demanded by the people thereof : that the abuses and grievances 
of which the latter have to complain may be fully and entirely re- 
dressed ; and that the laws and constitution may be hereafter admi- 
nistered in a manner consonant with justice, with the honour of the 
Crown and of the people of England, and with the rights, liberties and 
privileges of the people of this Province, and of this House by which 
they are represented. 

89. Resolved, That this House invites the members of the minority 
of the Legislative Council who partake the opinions of the people, the 
present members of the House of Assembly, until the next general 



67 

election, and afterwards all the members then elected, and such other 
persons as they may associate with them, to form one Committee or two 
committees of correspondence, to sit at Quebec and Montreal in the 
first instance, and afterwards at such place as they shall think proper; 
the said committees to communicate with each other, and with the 
several local committees which may be formed in different parts of the 
Province, and to enter into correspondence with the Hon. Denis Ben- 
jamin Viger, the agent of this province in England, with the said Daniel 
O'Connell and Joseph Hume, Esqrs. and with such other members of 
the House of Lords or of the House of Commons, and such other per- 
sons in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, as they may 
deem expedient, for the purpose of supporting the claims of the people 
of this Province and of this House; of furnishing such information, 
documents, and opinions as they may think adapted to make known 
the state, wishes, and wants of the Province; the said committees also 
to correspond with such persons as they shall think proper in the other 
British Colonies, which are all interested, that the most populous of 
their sister colonies do not sink under the violent attempt to perpetuate 
the abuses and evils which result as well from the vices of its consti- 
tution as from the combined malversation of the administrative, legisla- 
tive, and judicial departments, out of which have sprung insult and 
oppression for the people, and, by a necessary consequence, hatred and 
contempt on their part for the Provincial Government. 

90. Resolved, That the Honourable Denis Benjamin Viger be re- 
quested to remain at the seat of His Majesty's Government, at least 
during the present session of the Imperial Parliament, to continue to 
watch over the interests of the Province with the same zeal and the 
same devotedness as heretofore, without suffering himself to be dis- 
couraged by mere formal objections on the part of those who are un- 
willing to listen to the complaints of the country. 

91. Resolved, That the fair and reasonable expenses of the said two 
Committees of Correspondence, incurred by them in the perform- 
ance of the duties entrusted to them by this House, are a debt which 
it contracts towards them ; and that the representatives of the people 
are bound in honour to use all constitutional means to reimburse such 
expenses to the said Committee, or to such person as may advance 
money to them for the purposes above-mentioned. 

92. Resolved, That the message from his Excellency the Governor- 
in-Chief, received on the 13th of January last, and relating to the writ 
of election for the county of Montreal, with the extract from a despatch 
which accompanied it, the message from the same, received the same 
day, and relating to the Supply Bill, and the message from the same, 
received on the 14th January last, with the extract from a despatch 
which accompanied it, be expunged from the journals of this House. 



THE END. 



NOKMAN AND SKEEN, PRINTERS, MAIDEN LANE, COVENT GARDEN. 









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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

III 



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